Floppy Disk Question/Very Important!!!!! Please, Help!!!?

Question

I have a important document saved to a floppy disk. But my laptop isn’t working anymore, so I went to the library and rented a laptop, long story short. Its telling me the A disk is not formatted, but if I format it this will erase all contents. Giant dilemma! What can I possibly do to retrieve the document from the floppy disk? If that’s possibly … please, answer this I really need help with this one. I did not back up the data.

Answer 1

This is just a shot in the dark, but it's all I can thing of right now:



Do both the laptop you used to save the file to the disk and the laptop you're using now have the same operating system? I mean, do both run some form of Windows or are both Macs?



Because if say, you have a floppy disk formatted to use with a computer running any given version of Windows and then pop it into a Apple computer, it would probably complain the disk isn't formatted properly for it.



Sorry if I'm way off here.

Answer 2

Very not often are floppy's and floppy drives used anymore. In truth, I might threat to mention that except spec'd out (exceptionally further), you might now not uncover a computer in the marketplace in these days with a floppy force hooked up in it. No, you are not able to 'reduce a CD-rom smaller - absolutely exceptional applied sciences and they are no in which close suitable. You can NOT purchase floppy disks that maintain over one million.44mb -- you'll retailer greater than one million.44mb on a floppy through "zipping" the knowledge which might compress it right down to a measurement smaller than one million.44mb if it might. The historic five one million/four" floppy disks held approximately ninety-100k of knowledge. NO, WinXP might now not be capable to learn an historic five one million/four" floppy even supposing you would get a force to hook as much as the laptop. Sorry... (except, Apple connections have been customarily SCSI, serial, or AppleTalk - nine pin din and have been best suitable with Apple merchandise.) Hope this helped. Maggie

Answer 3

close the dialog, go to Windows Explorer, click on the floppy drive to see if it will read that way.

it may be a problem with different operating systems. The laptop you rented doesn't understand the formatting on the disc. Are both systems on Windows? are the windows versions different? Can you find a computer that has the same OS that your old laptop had?

Answer 4

Floppy disks are unreliable, if there is wear on the drive it can record data out of line, this makes it unreadable on any other drive. You may be able to use the original drive in another machine, this may work to retrieve the data, then consider saving it to flash drive. ALWAYS keep a copy on the hard drive, removable media is too easily lost or damaged. If you have a copy on the hard drive you might try fitting it in an external laptop drive enclosure and recover it by usb.

Answer 5

Blame Microsoft.



Assuming you are using XP, because you don't say.......



Seems some versions of Windows have issues reading floppies that were formatted with earlier operating systems.



Go to www.winimage.com and install WinImage ( free 30 day trial). see if you can read it with that program. Then save it to a floppy formatted in XP.

Answer 6

Dont format it if you need it.



Its probably just not compatible with the system on the other laptop.



Find out what system/program you used when you saved it to disk, and get it out of a computer with the same system/program.

Answer 7

I would call Kinko's printing service; they have computers that you can rent and usually the people who work there no how to do or answer the technical questions. They have been a big help to me in the past.

Answer 8

take it to best buy and they will put this file on a usb drive or something of that sort....