How to repair a floppy disk? - OT

[kaissa]

Hello,

I have a floppy from the old times formatted with Mac. I need to get the document from it. A Mac shop asked for 65 USD to do it. I have an XP with floppy and a Linux with floppy. I downloaded MacDisk but it cannot see the disk as well. DOS, XP and Linux cannot see the disk. I assume that the disk is damaged. Is there an utility that may fix it?

I apologize for this off topic subject but this one seemed like the best one out of the three forums.

Regards,

[Sven]

If you google your thread subject you might find this link useful. I have no experience with any of these tools, so it is just a hint. Also I don't know whether these Windows tools understand the Mac format of your disk.

Sven

[JuLieN]

Hello,

I have a floppy from the old times formatted with Mac. I need to get the document from it. A Mac shop asked for 65 USD to do it. I have an XP with floppy and a Linux with floppy. I downloaded MacDisk but it cannot see the disk as well. DOS, XP and Linux cannot see the disk. I assume that the disk is damaged. Is there an utility that may fix it?

I apologize for this off topic subject but this one seemed like the best one out of the three forums.

Regards,

You might want to try the Mac Emulator Basilisk II (which is free).
http://basilisk.cebix.net/

You'll need the ROM and system disks image of a real 68k Mac. For the later you can download them on Apple's website, for the former, well, Google is your friend

Apple: http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Su ... ion_7.5.3/

When you have a 68k Mac Emulated you'll be able to read this disk (if some sectors are damaged your data is lost...), and move it to your PC through a folder shared by Windows and Badilisk II.

[kaissa]

That is exactly what I needed! Thank you very much.

The disk drive is running like crazy so either the drive is gone or I have a bad disk. No matter what running Mac OS 7.5 was a great joy.

Regards,

[UncombedCoconut]

It depends on the type of floppy. If it's a 1.44 MB floppy (the kind that has a hole in the top-left corner), you can just image it (e.g. cp /dev/fd0 floppy.img in Linux -- or use GNU ddrescue if that gives you a read error part of the way through). After that there are several ways to mount the file system.

However, if it's a 400 or 800 KB floppy, a PC floppy drive is physically incapable of reading it. (explanation) If you're really adventurous, a product called KyroFlux claims to be able to help. I have no experience with it. (EDIT: Also, it costs more than 65 USD, so I guess that was a poor suggestion!)

[kaissa]

However, if it's a 400 or 800 KB floppy, a PC floppy drive is physically incapable of reading it. (explanation) If you're really adventurous, a product called KyroFlux claims to be able to help. I have no experience with it. (EDIT: Also, it costs more than 65 USD, so I guess that was a poor suggestion!)

It is a 1.44 MB disk. I will find out the program used first and try to work out with a sector editor. I have time till September. I will try KyroFlux if I have to. 65 bucks was just for the transfer of the file. We did not know that the disk has gone bad at the moment.

Regards,

[UncombedCoconut]

The KyroFlux suggestion was only for 400K/800K disks -- for a standard floppy, it may be no better than the drive you already have.

If you mean you're using a sector editor on the physical disk, I'll repeat my suggestion of imaging the disks first. There's no risk of further data loss if you work with copies of an image. It also only takes one good read from a problem area to recover it permanently. Almost any tool or emulator can treat the image like a disk (except reads in a bad area are instantaneous instead very slow, and appear to successfully read zeros). For instance, in BasiliskII you can add the image file to its "volumes" list. To try to read the filesystem in Linux, run mount -t hfs -o loop floppy.img mount-point.

I have used this method successfully to back up a number of old disks with minor problems. I created the images in Linux with "ddrescue /dev/fd0 -r 2 floppy.img floppy.log", carefully cleaning the magnetic disc's surface, and re-running that command. I could almost always narrow down the problem area to unused or unimportant sectors. The exception was a disk that had been badly mistreated. (For instance, its shutter had been missing for over 15 years. ) Good luck!