Any way to extract data from Floppies that have "gone bad"?

[James8BitStar]

I have several old disk-based games I'm trying to archive to a CD-ROM, but in some cases one of the disks is going nuts and remains that way when I scandisk it.

I've heard there are programs that can extract data from such floppies but a quick search on Google gives me too many results that don't sound at all like what I'm looking for, so I'm gonna take the quick way out and ask here.

Any help appreciated.

[namzep]

Pretty much any old disc based game is probably available on any number of abandonware sites. At least, that would be the route I would take. It would probably end up being less time consuming in the long run.

[skaar]

Also, try a few different floppy drives. Computer repair stores usually throw them out (I've thrown out a few hundred myself in the last 4 years) so pick through the bin and try them out.

Or - download ;)

[TheDomesticInstitution]

I usually use a pair of pliers. Or I guess you could try what these guys said.

[debian4life]

You could try Flobo's Floppy Bad Sector Repair. http://www.floborecovery.us/
This is freeware, you just have to scroll down there webpage to find it.

[ProgrammingAce]

another trick of the trade:

grab a new blank floppy and open up a dos window. type in "diskcopy a: a:". at the prompt, pop in the blank. Run a defrag from the dos prompt on the new copy.

[skaar]

another trick of the trade:

grab a new blank floppy and open up a dos window. type in "diskcopy a: a:". at the prompt, pop in the blank. Run a defrag from the dos prompt on the new copy.

That makes no sense. Explain how that's supposed to accomplish anything?

[James8BitStar]

I tried Flobo, and right off the bat it told me that it will repair sectors but also delete all the data on the disc, which is NOT what I want.

Here's the deal dudes, I'm trying to archive all my disk games, and I want them archived twice over--first archive is archives of the floppies (in case I want to manually install the games instead of having them preconfigured. Yes there are valid reasons for doing this), and second would be the game post-install. There's a whole lot of reasons abandonware isn't good enough.

EDIT: I'm going to try what ProgrammingAce suggested, even though it doesn't sound very logical to me either. DOUBLE EDIT: Didn't work.

Also, another question:

Is there any valid reason for archiving floppy disks as WinImage files, instead of just zips? In most of my experience all you have to do to recreate a floppy is copy the files that were on it onto a new disk, but I'm not sure if there are cases where that won't work.

[LucidDefender]

I've done countless data recoveries, from all sorts of media, cds, floppies, zip disks, hard drive's with bad sectors, bad bearings, bad controllers(swap the controller if you can find one close enough), etc; Not just as a hobby, I did this on a regular basis at my last job.

Here's my advice:

Use multiple floppy drives and ddrescue from a linux live cd, with a logfile stored on either a hard drive or usb flash drive.

http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/ I would recommend this distribution.

Boot off the cd, login, plug-in your usb flash drive, then mount it.

Now we need to create the image file of the diskette with ddrescue. ddrescue first goes through all the sectors in can read at a certain block size, copies that data off, then uses smaller block sizes to try to get more data off. You can also specify the retry amount.

ddescue can also store a log file that keeps track of where the bad data is, so you can stop the recovery at anytime and continue, or switch to another floppy drive to see if it can do a better job on the bad areas.



I would recommend doing this "ddrescue -r4 /dev/fd0 /mnt/myflashdrive/disk.img /mnt/myflashdrive/rescue.log"

Do this with a couple of different floppy drives, then copy the data to working floppy with dd. "dd if=/mnt/myflashdrive/disk.img of=/dev/fd0"

I would then go into Windows, and run photorec on the diskette. Have it recover what it can, then do a chkdsk a: /f in command prompt on the disk. Now, I'd run photorec again, and browse the floppy disk's contents to see if there's anything photorec missed.

[Flack]

Is there any valid reason for archiving floppy disks as WinImage files, instead of just zips? In most of my experience all you have to do to recreate a floppy is copy the files that were on it onto a new disk, but I'm not sure if there are cases where that won't work.

Zipping a disk would miss hidden files and possibly boot files. If you are wanting exact 1:1 images of old floppies, I'd suggest using WinImage.

[ProgrammingAce]

That makes no sense. Explain how that's supposed to accomplish anything?

the disk copy does a 1:1 copy of the contents. Running Defrag rebuilds the FAT table and the master boot record. This is usually more of an issue when people pull out a floppy while the drive is still writing data.

[Jorpho]

Is there any valid reason for archiving floppy disks as WinImage files, instead of just zips? In most of my experience all you have to do to recreate a floppy is copy the files that were on it onto a new disk, but I'm not sure if there are cases where that won't work.

Apart from the possibility of hidden or boot files, as Flack mentions, it is also possible that the files were laid out on this disk in a very specific way that the game's installer would use as a means of copy protection.


the disk copy does a 1:1 copy of the contents. Running Defrag rebuilds the FAT table and the master boot record. This is usually more of an issue when people pull out a floppy while the drive is still writing data.

I wasn't aware defragging a disk with a damaged FAT table and master boot record was even possible. I would run Scandisk or the old Norton Disk Doctor instead.

[ProgrammingAce]

I wasn't aware defragging a disk with a damaged FAT table and master boot record was even possible. I would run Scandisk or the old Norton Disk Doctor instead.

Hell, you can defrag your com ports if you remember the archaic commands to map them to a drive letter...

[James8BitStar]

I tried the diskcopy a: a: thing in Windows XP (does it matter what Windows you use?). It told me that the disk had a lot of unreadable sectors, and then that it couldn't copy to the blank disk because the "formats were incompatible" or something.

Someone on another forum pointed me to a program called VGAcopy, I'm gonna give that a go.

[JLukas]

rawwritewin is another image utility you might want to try

[TisLord]

Try what luciddefender said or just face the disc may be junk...