Help retrieving old floppy disks.
Posted by Impressive_Raise_67@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 44 comments
Hey everyone,
I wasn’t sure which subreddit would be best for this, so I figured I’d start here. My mom is turning 50 soon, and I recently found some old discs from when she was in her early 20s. I’m really hoping to recover the videos on them. They’re the only copies we have, and I’m pretty sure one of them is her wedding video.
I tried using a standard USB disc drive to open them, but it didn’t work. Since then, I’ve been hesitant to try anything else because I don’t want to risk damaging them further. Does anyone know what kind of service or specialist I should be looking for to safely recover the data? Or if there’s a specific subreddit or place better suited for this, I’d really appreciate being pointed in the right direction.
BeepFixer@reddit
I scrolled through the negative trolling enough to quit reading.. So not sure if this has been said yet..
@OP if you tried reading them with no succes it might be because they were mac or pc format.
These days stuff is a little more compatible, but you might still need to do a quick Google on what to do if reading mac discs on pc or reversed with the floppy drive you have.
If it asks to format, do NOT do that. That erases the disk.
I don't know what machine you're using to read on now (PC or Mac) or on what machine they were written, but have a Google or ask chatgpt what Software to use.
Hope that helps
respectdesfonds@reddit
In your position I would look at sending these off to a service that does this kind of data recovery. There's a lot of trial and error involved in retrieving data that old and someone with experience and the right equipment is going to make much quicker work of it. I haven't used them personally but I've had colleagues (I'm a digital archivist) recommend sydex.com. There are others as well.
MassiveMegalodon@reddit
Waste of money. Unless she worked for NASA or Microsoft these discs have nothing of value.
sidusnare@reddit
They could have personal photos or documents of great sentimental value.
MassiveMegalodon@reddit
When a technically literate person leaves a document on a floppy disc 30 years after writeable CDs and cheap harddrives are commonplace it's not because they have value - sentimental or otherwise. You can still buy a floppy drive today for about $20. At best the discs have some mildly nostalgic data but the chances are really low. OPs solution is the same, paying for recovery is money down the toilet but buy a working drive and copy the files is more practical - albeit you won't find any software that reads the formats so you're still not actually recovering anything.
sidusnare@reddit
30 years ago was 1995, plenty of people used floppies. Quit being so negative, help the guy or be quiet.
MassiveMegalodon@reddit
I am helping. This thread is already full of shills promoting their recovery services. I was there 30 years ago and no-one was storing their wedding videos on a floppy. End of story.
sidusnare@reddit
He was asking for it, I was there too, and they were, the Sony Digital Mavica MVC-FD90, released in 2000 stored on floppies.
How about you back off and let people enjoy things? We don't need any gatekeepers here. He wants to know what's on the floppies, let's help him.
MassiveMegalodon@reddit
No, it didn't. It takes photos. Still photos.
I already said OP can buy a floppy drive if they really want. My whole point is they absolutely should not spend money on a recovery service.
sidusnare@reddit
Why? You don't know what's on it, let them have fun.
MassiveMegalodon@reddit
And you don't know if that beautiful foreign blonde messaging you on facebook isn't an Indian dude but at some point you have to consider the odds. The odds that OPs mum had the one camera in existence that might have up to 50 frames of "video" on it are vanishingly small and they'll most likely end up paying hundreds of dollars for a copy of the seating list or something equally inane.
sidusnare@reddit
Let people be happy
sidusnare@reddit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica
blinkybit@reddit
A floppy disk would be extremely unlikely to contain a video. The size of a typical video file is much much larger than the capacity of a floppy, not to mention that videos from 30ish years ago were probably recorded in analog format, not digital.
MassiveMegalodon@reddit
The only correct answer. An old floppy i going to store 50 frames of video, but it won't have that eith because no sane person would do that. Don't waste any money listening to the idiots in this thread. Those floppies don't have a wedding video on them. Photos, maybe. No video. 0% chance.
Similar-Jello-5434@reddit
I don’t know that it was a sane decision but I’m in a similar boat with a large number of floppys from the late 90s/early 2000s. My late MIL labeled them all with titles that insinuate a video (ex: joes birthday 2001) but it’s possible they’re photos. I’ve never understood why she used floppies for this when she also had several memory cards, disks, and vhs tapes with content on them as well but there’s definitely supposed to be some form of family footage on them.
SirTwitchALot@reddit
They could be photos, but they're going to look like they were taken with a potato. Even the best digital cameras from that era took shit photos. Here are some samples from a floppy disk camera from the era. Zoom in on them. These are not low quality thumbnails. These are the originals in the best possible quality
https://graphics.stanford.edu/~lucasp/Mavica/
blinkybit@reddit
Those photos actually look tons better than I was expecting.
Sensitive-Medium3427@reddit
Even if they look like a$$ , I'm sure OP would still like to preserve them....
Efficient_Dog59@reddit
I miss flying toasters!!! 😊
MassiveMegalodon@reddit
https://www.patreon.com/posts/flying-toasters-141691459
Efficient_Dog59@reddit
Alas I am a heathen or maybe a Luddite. Aka a windows user (primarily). 😊
chabala@reddit
I'd love some flying toasters for my Windows 3.0 system.
justeUnMec@reddit
Not quite, Sony Mavica stored video frames on floppy. 30 years ago digital video was starting to become a consumer thing.
ExplodedPenisDiagram@reddit
I run an engineering consultancy. Data recovery is one of our services.
Data recovery from very old floppy disks is expensive. Generally, one would send such a thing over if they already know what's on it and have no other choice for recovering the data. Floppy disks of that age are often worn to the point that we have to use specialized methods to magnetically image them (though sometimes they're fine).
We're talking like hundreds of dollars per disk for a job of many disks (economy of scale and all that).
If you want to send me a single disk to try, I'll do it for free with no guarantees of preserving the disk or retrieving the data. This is a good way to determine if it's worth it.
Typically, you only get one chance to read disks that old. Their oxide coating has a tendency to flake off.
docshipley@reddit
This is the only sane comment in the whole thread.
scubascratch@reddit
You need a greaseweazle and an old floppy drive from an old computer. Not a USB floppy.
BrightonDBA@reddit
If you have any 5.25” or 3.5” we can help 👍
2raysdiver@reddit
Could you provide images of these floppy discs so we know what we are working with here? I find it highly unlikely that there would be videos on a floppy disc.
aspie_electrician@reddit
Floppy.img
2raysdiver@reddit
ha-ha. If OP doesn't know enough to accurately describe the media, then showing us a picture is better.
pksato@reddit
Hi,
Floppy disk primary used to store programs and related data, text, spreadsheet, database (DBF), etc.
And, scanned photos, and very short videos.
Common formatting are:
FAT12, used by ibm compatible pcs.
MFS and HFS, used by Apple Macintosh computers.
And other formatting used by Commodore Amiga, Atari Computers and others.
Early digital cameras used Floppy Disk to store photos and Video Clips.
Sony Mavica´s are ones of them.
Mavica use FAT12 as formatting.
For read a unknown condition or formatting, need to use specialized tools like greaseweazle.
starcube@reddit
Post a photo of the disks so we can understand what you actually have and then give you useful advice.
AncientGuy1950@reddit
When you say 'old floppy disks' what are you talking about?
8 inch disks?
5.25 inch disks?
3.5 inch disks?
Hard Sectored, Soft Sectored?
What machine wrote to them?
8 inch and 5.25 disks from 30 years ago, unless stored perfectly, have likely delaminated since then.
A data recovery service is likely your best chance outside a hobbiest who is into data recovery. Likely to be expensive, and I doubt that anyone put an important video on a floppy.
starcube@reddit
You're asking for detail this person likely doesn't understand. The best course here is to ask for a picture of the disks and go from there.
EpsilonMajorActual@reddit
What are they formatted for? Ibm, apple, Amiga, Atari, etc. Different computers used different formatting
majestic_ubertrout@reddit
Floppy disks tend to go bad over time. That said, I've found BadCopy Pro and some other tools may have _some_ luck in retreiving the disks. You can also try a flux reader like a greaseweazle which will at a minimum give you a perfect image of the physical disc which you can try to use digital tools to recover.
Jim-Jones@reddit
Can you post pictures of these disks?
ken_the_boxer@reddit
Better start looking in the attic for VHS tapes
miniscant@reddit
Video files would be really limited on a 3.5 inch floppy disk (assuming that's what they are since you mentioned a USB drive).
Maybe if somebody knows which type of system they were written on (Apple Macintosh, IBM-compatible PC with DOS or Windows) they can offer guidance.
DigitalLife2@reddit
After 30 years, the floppies might be junk. This depends on how they were stored (moisture, humidity, temperature, magnetic fields). You can open the shutter on a 3½ disk and look for mold on the disk. Bit rot might of killed them too. First get a BLANK floppy and try to format & face files to it, then try read it. This will give you a basic functionality of the USB floppy drive (I've seen then new out of the box that are bad). You will have to find someone that does floppy data recovery.
glencanyon@reddit
I would be glad to retrieve the files for you if I can. I don't believe that there are videos on the floppy disks, but there could be photos. Please check out my website at https://floppyarchaeology.com/
fondow@reddit
Are you talking about floppy disks or Cd-Rom? Because a wedding video on a floppy disk would be very short and of very low quality.
If it is a Cd-Rom, old discs can be sometimes tricky. You might want to first try the drive to make sure that it is working, with a disc that you are sure it is ok. Then, some old discs might work on some drives, but not on other, depending of the tolerance of the drive.
siliconlore@reddit
Could you provide more details of what kind of floppies these are? I find it hard to belive that wedding video fit on any kind of floppy unless they are Zip disks which wouldn't have fit in a USB reader.
Is it possible that the disks are Mac formatted? A PC won't read those easily.