Computer Help Wanted

[Sir Redman]

Right, I'm having a bit of a problem here

A couple of months ago we gave an old computer of ours to my cousin to use. I thought I backed up everything I needed but the other day I realised I hadn't and need to get a file off it. So yesterday after finishing painting their office (holiday work) I put the file on a floppy disk and took it home. Now, however, I cannot get the disk to read on my computer or my Dad's laptop. When I put the disk in and try to open A drive I get a message saying that the disk is not formatted and asking me if I want to format it. I am well aware that if I format it now I will lose the file. So my question is is there any way to get the file off the disk or make a copy of it somewhere?

If I need to I can get the file again some other day but it would save me an awful lot of time if I can get the file off the disk somehow.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[PY]

My uncle's computer does that, I just click no when it asks me to format it and then it carries on as normal. Not really sure why it does it or whether that's of any help but thought I'd let you know.

[Agent TBY]

Here's a tip - never delete files off floppy disks, always format them.

Deleting files often cause floppies to go bad quickly, and this one has probably had stuff deleted off it. It's nothing, the file system has been totally damaged and cannot be replaced, that's it.

[Sir Redman]

Pox.

Cheers anyway.

[Macka]

Is the disc formatted with a file system your computer can't read? For example, is the old computer a Mac or does it run some variant of UNIX? (Chances are small, I know.) You should be able to recover the file, but it depends on what operating system you run, the file system, and whether or not the floppy has had it.There is a number of freeware software avaliable for Windows that will recover lost files.

Unfortunately, I'm not all that familiar with software for Windows, but I managed to track down this which might work.

Formatting the disc doesn't necessarily mean you'll lose the file, by the way.

[Smudge]

Reboot !

[James]

Check the Google Ads at the top of the page - a handy link to a floppy disk recovery site

[Sir Redman]

Originally Posted by Macka

Is the disc formatted with a file system your computer can't read? For example, is the old computer a Mac or does it run some variant of UNIX? (Chances are small, I know.) You should be able to recover the file, but it depends on what operating system you run, the file system, and whether or not the floppy has had it.There is a number of freeware software avaliable for Windows that will recover lost files.

Unfortunately, I'm not all that familiar with software for Windows, but I managed to track down this which might work.

Formatting the disc doesn't necessarily mean you'll lose the file, by the way.

I can't remember the specs of the old computer but it has been upgraded a few times and runs on Windows 98.Its old enough that it doesn't have a USB port or I would have just chucked it on my USB flash drive.

It shouldn't matter though now, because tomorrow I'm heading over there again to do more painting and I will make sure I get it. This time I have an almost foolproof plan: I will put the file on a floppy disk (I'm taking several over just to be sure) and test to see if it reads on one of my uncle's work computers, and if it does I will transfer it to my flash drive. If it doesn't work I will try linking two computers with a direct link cable and using my flash drive through the other one. If that fails then I'll have a crack at the recovery program.

And James the file I want is a 1 Mb zip file so sadly your google ad program - well the free demo anyway - won't work because it only recovers files up to 32 kb.

Thanks for your help.