bad floppy?

[DANIMAL]

Is there anything that can be done with a bad floppy disk?
I had a guy that had Some very important financial stuff on a floppy but he could not access it. I ran scandisk onit and it showed about 20 tracks with a bad cluster in each. there was know way of opening the info/copying the info/ortranfering the info.
Just because there is a bad track why can't we acsess the rest of the disk?

Any Ideas.

[tyremanb]

when u ran the scandisk, did u use auto fix errors, as that usually sorts it with me. well, at the very least it will label the bad secotrs in the fat, so they will not be read. also, u cud try doing a diskcopy by right-clicking on the floppy icon in my computer and clicking "disk copy", or by using a dos shell. that might get sum of the data off. i suppose theres always the possiblity of 3rd party s/ware such as norton being able to fix it, but who knows?

good luck.

[DANIMAL]

Originally posted by Mutant Grabble:
<STRONG>when u ran the scandisk, did u use auto fix errors, as that usually sorts it with me. well, at the very least it will label the bad secotrs in the fat, so they will not be read. also, u cud try doing a diskcopy by right-clicking on the floppy icon in my computer and clicking "disk copy", or by using a dos shell. that might get sum of the data off. i suppose theres always the possiblity of 3rd party s/ware such as norton being able to fix it, but who knows?

good luck.</STRONG>


Tried all those things except Norton.

Does anyone have any info on using norton or a software of the like to fix such a thing?

[Geek #1]

The original norton utilities for Dos came with a wonderful util that fixed (temporally at least) problems like this. I have ver 6 at home, but it may be in other versions, ask around see if someone has a copy.

[Archer]

A couple of freeware utilities here for you to try : http://download.cnet.com/1,10150,0-10001-103-0-1-1,00.html?qt=disk+repair&filterQuery=true&os=&ca=&li=2 http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,10615,72500,00.html http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,10615,61664,00.html
or if allelse fails try ONTRACK`s recovery software

[bbtech6650]

Spinrite will do the trick!!

[DANIMAL]

thanks bbtech,
I sent the file to my customer to try out.

[AlienDyne]

You may have already told him that a floppy disk is not the safest place to store your important files, but tell him once again!

[DANIMAL]

Originally posted by AlienDyne:
<STRONG>You may have already told him that a floppy disk is not the safest place to store your important files, but tell him once again!</STRONG>

I have told him a couple of times and offered a CDRW or seperate Hard disk for files and back up. thanks though.

[http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi]

Keep in mind that CD-R(W) and hard disks can fail just as easily as a floppy.

The general rule I use is to store the data on a hard disk, then use two CD-RWs to back it up, alternating them so that I always have an old version and a current version. I've saved my butt more than once by being able to reload an old version after I'd already backed up the current version.

If it's really important, consider a RAID 1 setup.

[DANIMAL]

Originally posted by Captain Packrat:
<STRONG>Keep in mind that CD-R(W) and hard disks can fail just as easily as a floppy.

The general rule I use is to store the data on a hard disk, then use two CD-RWs to back it up, alternating them so that I always have an old version and a current version. I've saved my butt more than once by being able to reload an old version after I'd already backed up the current version.

If it's really important, consider a RAID 1 setup.</STRONG>

thanks for that info but the customer is not as concerned as originally thought. Raid 1 would be way more than enough for this guy.
CDRW with new and old versions would be great for him.

[DR]

I ran across this site the other day. They have a lot of utilities including legacy apps. I used one they had to repair bad sectors on a floppy disk. Some had to do with recovering data though I have not tried any yet. I believe they had one that would copy a bad disk. Wouldn't swear to it, after looking at the first hundred they start to blend together. http://www.simtel.net/

[DANIMAL]

Waiting to here from that customer to let you guys know if any thing worked. I post when I find out.