Need help with floppies

[johncarr82]

In 1995 I bought a Packard Bell Legend using Windows 3.11. My son, at that time, was not in the US and e-mailed me frequently. He asked if I would store his e-mails, something like a diary as it was a record of what he was doing. Not wanting to accumulate a massive file I put them on floppies. He is now at an APO address and has requested that I send them to him on CD's. No problem with that except six of these floppies refuse to open on my HP Pavillion using XP. The error message comes up as, "this disk has not been formatted."

I still have the old computer which my daughter upgraded to Windows 95, and it will open three of these floppies, three it will not, giving the error message, "unable to read from source." Problem: My CD burner is in the HP Pavillion, and cant copy them on the old Legend. I understand that when you format (re-format) a disk it erases all the data on it. Does anyone have any suggestions as to opening these floppies? Thanks very much for any help.

 

[Triple6]

Try several different computers - maybe the older the better. If you can open any of the disks then copy them to that computer and then copy them to a new good floppy disk or email them to yourself and then take them to the computer that has the burner to put onto CD.

 

[Triple6]

Oh, and formating does remove the data of the disk so don't do that, it'll make it harder to get the files off.

 

[mtzlplex]

Something to try. Do a Google search for a small free program called Flopshow, it is a file recovery program for floppys.

 

[brite750]

This is a long shot, but do these disks have a hole in both lower corners or just one?

 

[johncarr82]

Antec, there are two square holes. One open all the time and the other with a slide that can be opened or closed. John