Floppy disks that are incompatible with windows NT,XP

If you can find a machine which can read them, Xcopy them to a newer medium. (Xcopy is an old DOS command which could copy from one medium to another). I keep an old machine back in the spare bedroom just so I can copy software I wrote gazillion years ago from 5 1/4 flops over to 3 1/2. And I made sure that the current machine would read 3 1/2 inch flops. The salesman thought I was nuts! "Why would you want that??

Also, there is a windows program which will cause XP to emulate Windows 95 (or whichever earlier DOS). I would look at Microsoft for that. I don't have the filename off the top of my head. Yes... Microsoft commited the cardinal sin and did not make XP downward compatible.

While this is not a solution, it at least gives you a direction to look in. Best of luck in your search.

Bill

Diskette drives head misalignment causes read error as "Disk not formatted". Same diskette tested in ten PC is readed by six or seven. This misalignment is more current since 2000 or 2001 when diskettes were avoided massively.

Possibly/probably due to different file formats.

Win98 has an underlying DOS OS and can read DOS disks. XP is not DOS capable.

I have had the same experience. Try moving the Floppy drive from one that reads it to the newer machine and it will read it.

The really difficult one is to read an old 5 inch disk!

I have found some floppies only have a shelf life of one or 2 years, then they are unreadable by anything. I have been trying to burn all my old floppies to cd, then verify they read in a second machine. It is surprising the number of bad burns one can have!

You may also have an issue with 720k vs. 1.4M 3.5" floppies. Some newer machines will only read High Density disks. You can use a HD disk in the older machine, but it will format it as a standard density. If the newer machine can read both densities, and the disk is a HD disk formatted in the old machine, then it may work if you simply put tape over the HD hole (opposite the Write-protect hole). If the new machine uses optical sensors, the tape must be opaque; if it uses physical switches, scotch tape will do.

I have made some quick testing using an old DOS machine and my WinXP machine, all floppies were read.....

I would guess that your XP machine has a drive that is not quite good enough to read floppies that may have been written slightly offtrack a long time ago....

As someone else said, just make a copy of them on a machine that CAN read them (after making sure that your XP machine can read floppies formatted from that machine!)

In the past I have also found that if I format a few floppies on the machine that has the read problem (your XP machine) and only write the data to them on the machine that CAN read the problem floppies, that will quite often fix the problem...

If you are using a USB floppy drive on your XP machine, all bets are off as I do not have such a drive to test with.....sorry.

A further possibility is to make a simple network between the PC that can read the floppies and your XP machine and treat the floopy drive as a remote drive till the data is on your XP machine....2000 and XP can talk to each other in this manner, though I personally have never done it....it all depends on how many floppies must be read!!!

I wish you the best in your endeavours.

The USB floppy drive and XP worked for me with some problem floppies. The XP machines internal floppy wouldn't read, I grabbed the USB floppy from my laptop and used it with the XP and was able to retrieve the data.

Another time I took apart the floppy drive (I know, a total waste of time and $) and discovered dust had accumulated under a "band" that moved the read head. Cleaning it allowed me to read some of the older disks, but then newer ones from the drive were toast. I believe the dust realigned the heads.

Floppies just aren't very impressive!

CD's are a little better.

Love those memmory sticks. (However, I am not convinced about their shelf life for archives.)

Isn't it true that W2000 and NT derived machines (XP) can read NTSF and FAT32 formatted drives, but not earlier? Could this be the hangup you're dealing with?

If you have USB1 on your windows 98 machine down load files to a memory stick, then transfer to windows XP machine. Should work OK unless there is a problem with the file format.

Thank you all for you comments. All disks were 1.44MB. I use a 720K for a DOS boot disk. It works on any machine. I have a network cable to another machine, but now it can't find it. I took the floppies to another with 2 drives, and copied the files on one disk to another (at least some of them). The other floppy showed the file, but it couldn't be copied, so it was bad. It was a backup disk, and I was able to just make a new backup for it, so my home problems are solved.

At work we still use floppies every day. A coworker brings me a floppy, and I add data to it. We have about 20, and we lose less than 1 per year. Those floppies were probably formated with NT or newer, and XP reads them OK. None of the 3 XP machines that I have access to can read the older (DOS formatted) ones, but win2000 can. It's not just a floppy issue; the XP machines find a CD with dos files to be blank as well. My theory is that the IT department has configured them that way as a security measure; they don't want a "back door" to be available. Any thoughts on that? As one of you said, it could be a format problem. The older disks are probably FAT 16, and the new ones are FAT 32? Does anyone know for sure?

StandardsGuy

Floppy now is only one in majority normally called 3.5" drives [1.44MB but may be formatted to 1.66MB, sometime the MS installer came on this type of format]. There were some 2MB & more but the Floppy-drive normally comes with PCs supports 1.44 MB floppies. [can read upto 1.66MB formats. 5-1/2" floppys are almost dead.

Actually the major problem universally is being faced is poor Media used in floppies & non-standard Drives being marketted.

I thought that it is only my country's problem, but sent by my son from UK [costly ones] have the same problem. Now USB sticks be used for portable data & Boot-CDs for booting to DOS.

HD-COPY.jpg

Floppies are formatted in Fat-16 & is recognised by all the Windows Platforms [Even DOS]

So there is no question of System Compatibility.

It is the Quality of Floppy-Drives & Media of Floppies which is questionable; every-where in the World. Purchase a carton of 10, you will be able to get 7/8 which are read by your system first hand. Copy some file on known-to-be-good floppy; Windows will pop-up with the error message " .. not formatted...like to ". If luck is with you; either during copy or next time put the floppy in & Taste the error message " .. not formatted...like to ".

I asked my son in UK for some good floppies. He sent me a pack of 100. You will be astonished that the ratio was the same 20% bad guys. [2 out of 10 refused to do hand-shake with windows.

Question is: Are the floppies bad or Drives? I experimented on at least 20 systems but could not verify.

To confirm the validity of my opinion; I handed-over 3 floppies [good, formatted before copy].

In UK only 1 worked.

I think it is the quality of media being used by manufacturers is to be tested by some Authority to save the consumers from this I will say "Fraud" in markets.

I use "HD-COPY" a DOS program by "Oliver Fromme" a German Gentleman of Windows 3.1 era; which formats, makes .img of floppy & copies it back, Copy-disk [not like Windows] but you can make unlimited Disk-copy only by getting floppy-data once as the data is kept in internal-buffer till it is shut down.

It supports Format 720KB, 800KB, 1.2MB, 1.36MB, 1.44MB, 1.6MB & 1.68MB [famous MS Floppies for MS Programs].

HD-COPY_Formats.jpg

From this I remember that some old MS obsoleted sets were imported as junk by some Pakistani businessmen & those floppies were at sale @ Pak Rupees 5.00 only while new floppies were sold @ Pak Rs 35/ per piece in 1995. Those were so reliable that Windows 95 [& Windows 3.11 also on 5.5" floppies] was in 21/22 floppies, and none of those failed.

I got out of those floppies & could get one and tried it. It is still functioning, though with low capacity.

One thing to care that Floppies are on Magnetic material [fe-oxide on plastic] BE KEPT AWAY FROM MAGNETIC MATERIALS & FIELDS, such as Monitor, Speakers etc.

I think you have experienced too much use of old Floppy drives. I repair computers frequently (mostly Macs, but I share floppies with PCs regularly), The early floppy drives (especially the 800/720k and earlier 3.5" ones) very commonly used greases as lubricants. These greases both dry out and accumulate dirt, resulting in a sluggish motion or total failure. I clean first, then use one of the teflon-based oils like Tri-Flo (available in bicycle shops in the USA) to lubricate, then absorb most of the excess oil on paper towels. All this requires removing the drive from its enclosure, of course.

My experience with actual failure of the disk itself is more like 1 in 30 to 50, as long as we are talking about High Density (1.44M) floppies used in High Density drives. All the HD disks I've ever seen have HD embossed in the plastic, and of course have the HD hole in addition to the write-protect hole. An HD floppy formatted in a single density drive will work fine in that and other single density drives, but will not work in a High Density drive unless the HD hole is covered, and the HD drive is capable of reading single density disks.

The reason that they are unreadable is probably because they were formatted on a drive that is 20 years old and has formatted 100,000,000 floppies already.

Format the new floppies on YOUR PC, watch the formatting process, did it mark any areas as bad? If not, you have a good floppy. Then write it at least once full and read back, did you read it all 100%? If yes, you probably have a very good floppy.

If another PC still cannot read it, format the floppy on that PC first, then just write the data on that floppy from the first PC and see if the 2nd PC can read that better. If still problems, throw both floppy drives out and replace with identical new ones. (its too difficult to decide which of the others are not writing correctly and be 100% correct!)

NEVER EVER RELY ON THE FORMATTING FROM THE MFR..... FATAL!!

You might see that then only 1% or less are defective.

Remember the first rules of data safety:-

1) each data must be held on two seperate backups.

2) each backup must be on completely seperate media. (Not on different partitions on the same disk(s)

3) Each media must be held in two, physically seperate locations (Fire, flood and terrorism)

Not following these rules will mean pain when data loss ccurrs !!!! ....and it will!!!

dkwarner & Andy Germany

Thanks

I would like to add as I got a link for the HD-COPY as anew file for info for all:

Floppy disk utilities

Includes HD-Copy 2.5e,

Qcopy a mixture between Disk copy and Copy

http://www.geocities.com/ykf_chan/files/floppy.zip