win98 to win xp disk help

I had saved some valuable pics from my old PC onto floppy (only drive available) now have winXP. It won't read floppy (disk not formatted) if I try to format I will loose all pics. Is there a way to retrieve these files?

 

I don't recall which win98 version I had. I found the floppies in the back of a file drawer & I know that win98 was the os I was using at that time. I'll try that link & see if I can get them. My other thought was to take them to Walmart & download the floppy onto CD. (that is if their self help hardware will open a win98 file).

 

I tried to open the disk in the only pc I have that has a floppy drive. It tells me the disk is not formatted. If I format, I will lose all data on the disk. BTW. the computer I tried to open the disk on also runs WinXP

 

I sometimes get that message on one computer, and not on the one that wrote the files. If someone else has a floppy, they may be able to read it, but if the disk has been sitting for a very long time, it's magnetism may have been weakened over time (especially if near a motor or tv something.) I've had to re-magnetize the hard disk in my PC-XT twice (It's almost a quarter century old!) and I don't find floppies to be as reliable. The best way I've found to recover information when I get that message is to try a different floppy drive. (I still work with win98 disks, BTW) Sometimes one drive is slightly misaligned in one direction and another in the opposite direction, so their disks are unreadable by each other, but readable by themselves and correctly aligned drives. Also, some drives are not as effective at reading older disks that may have lost magnetism. Maybe getting them to put it on a CD is a good idea? They hopefully have above average equipment for reading disks.

 

One trick that might work is this. (I did it once and it did work).

Put the floppy in the drive, Right click the drive icon.
Click 'Copy Disk'.
See if it will copy the data. If it will, you can put it on another disk, which your computer should be able to read.

I know this idea sounds like it won't work, but I had to do it once when a disk I couldn't replace had gone silly. You've nothing to lose by trying.

 

That copy disk trick is probably the best way if you only have one drive. I think I did it once before successfully, but then got other drives, and just used them. I've also used utilities that do a magnetic refresh, that is, basically copy the disk back on itself, but for floppies, I think just using disk copy is generally better. Also, if the first attempt fails, you can try a couple more times. Even temperature can make a difference, and several attempts can warm the drive and disk. I often try to read a disk like that soon after I turn the computer on, and give it several attempts, to get a range of temperature.

 

Thanks I'll try the copy disk command tomorrow when I get home. I'll let ya know.

 

I could go to my son's house when he gets back in state, as he has my old computer (the one the file was written on). I don't know anyone else that is still running win98.

 

I know, and I really appreciate it. I thought I might have a better chance on a win98 system. My husband's computer won't open them, they may be bad. I'll try at work on thursday too. If that doesn't work, then the pictures are lost for good. Everyone's suggestions have been greatly appreciated.:wine

 

It will say that the disk is not formatted. I tried the "copy" command, but no luck yet.:cry

 

On Win98, I used to use debug to try reading disks when they got bad, but it doesn't work well for text, let alone pix. I imagine Recuva would have found them if it was possible.

Since I posted last, I found a disk of my own that has become "not formatted." This is just what happens to all disks when they get old. Hard disks usually last longer, and CDs longest. If I get it working, I'll post how...

 

When I first started playing with pc's I had quite a few older compaq's and hp's I got for free before I built my first win98 unit. What I found while running all of them at the same time (and later verified in a magazine article) was that although I could create and read floppies on the older machines, they could not be read by the newer. But fooling around with swapping floppies I found that If I made a floppy with a new floppy drive in the old unit it could be seen with the new unit with the same drive reinstalled.

What was happening was the old floppy drives in the old units had worn, and the header of the disks was being written slightly off were it should be. that meant the disks were visible on the machine that wrote them (because it was off reading and writting with the same head) but not on others with newer or different floppies because they were looking for the header info in the wrong place.

Your answer may be as simple as installing the older original floppy drive in your new machine temporarily to extract the files then put the new one back in. Of course this requires you to still have that old machine and floppy.

Other than that you could try to find a floppy recovery software that allows you to change the read head offset, and changing it one digit at a time see if you can find the missplaced header.

Does any of that make sense to you?

 

I'm going to try tomorrow at my son's house. I'll save to my thumb drive, as the old computer doesn't have CR writing capability

 

Thanx, I wasn't aware of that. I do have my driver.

 

I do agree that many disks last a long time. Actually, I still have many 5 1/4" floppies almost as old as I am which still work. Perhaps I should've left off the when they get old part. I just think it's a good idea to assume they aren't going to last because I've had so many fail with stuff I needed. I assume all parts will stop working at some point. Hopefully, this point will be after you are done with them.

BTW, That was a good catch with the thumb driver. Most people don't remember win98. I still use it, (I am right now) but don't use thumb drives. lol


Update to my disk: It got mixed up with some others, and now all of them work. I don't know if it just started working, or got lost. That's why I haven't posted here for a while, trying to figure out what happened.


I did think of one more thing that happened to me a couple times: I had a physically broken disk. I fixed a couple when their springs fell off, and the metal lid things weren't opening right (or closing). One of these was jamming the drive or something and giving not formatted messages. (I think the metal may have been bent as well, like it had been dropped on something hard.) Another kind of break is the disk itself coming off the hub. I don't know why this happens, but it probably is something like cheap glue or a faulty disk. It's a bit hard to tell if the disk actually spins when you (carefully) turn the hub since it's smooth. I haven't fixed this problem before, because it wasn't important, but I suppose I could glue it or something. The trick would be to center it perfectly like it was again.

 

Hi,
Just want to let everyone know that after some time, patience, and a few choice words muttered under my breath, I was able to retreive some of the pics on the disks. A few would not load at all (the pics), and 2 were missing some of the picture (looked like scissors had cropped from the edges and middle. I was able to save 64 of the pics on those discs. Probably have lost the same amount, but 64 is better than none. I found a free download that would repair disks (dang, I can't remember the name), and it worked.
Thanks to all of you for your help and recommendations. I do plan to stay with this forum, as I sometimes need some assistance.

:celebrate

 

Already done! Thanx for your help.:hyper