Recovery data from floppy disks

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Recovery data from floppy disks

Postby petegeek on Mon Aug 18, 2014 7:11 pm

Hi all,
I've been recovering some data off some very old Mac floppy disks (about 20 years old).
I've had some success but have run into the problem with some disks where the oxide layer has degraded and scrapes off onto the drive heads.
I do clean the drive heads between each attempt (with isopropyl alcohol) to remove the buildup so as not to damage other disks.

I realize these floppies are probably a lost cause but I do enjoy a challenge.
Does anyone have any suggestions about how to minimize this oxide scraping while I try to read these disks?

Cheers,
Peter
Peter has too many computers
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Re: Recovery data from floppy disks

Postby tezza on Mon Aug 18, 2014 9:22 pm

Pete,

I've had this problem with 5.25 inch floppy disks and found taking them out of their covers and washing them in warm soapy water helped. I'm not sure what you'd do with a 3.5 inch disk though?
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Re: Recovery data from floppy disks

Postby Gibsaw on Tue Aug 19, 2014 3:00 pm

tezza wrote:Pete,

I've had this problem with 5.25 inch floppy disks and found taking them out of their covers and washing them in warm soapy water helped. I'm not sure what you'd do with a 3.5 inch disk though?


I would imagine that with a certain amount of care and cotton buds, you can gently clean them in the cover.
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Re: Recovery data from floppy disks

Postby petegeek on Tue Aug 19, 2014 5:53 pm

Thanks to you both for the great tips. Washing a floppy disk is a surprising idea!
I'm going to give that a go.
Cheers
Peter
Peter has too many computers
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Location: Auckland

Re: Recovery data from floppy disks

Postby tezza on Tue Aug 19, 2014 8:07 pm

Here is my write up on the 5.25 inch ones.
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blo ... -water.htm
Tez (Terry Stewart) (Administrator)
Collection: https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/co ... /index.htm
Projects and Articles: https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/index.htm
Twitter: @classiccomputNZ | YouTube: Terry Stewart
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