Recover files from 5 1/4 floppy

[katz]

I guess times are getting really slow, as I would never even consider accepting a job like this. A guy contacted me today in regards to pulling data from 100+ old 5 1/4 disks. Who knows what condition they would even be in...

Have any of you guys done anything like this lately? I did come across an old 2012 thread that listed a company that builds a gizmo which attaches to usb,

With shipping, probably a $65 investment.

http://shop.deviceside.com/

What do you guys think? Any other suggestions?

 

[Porthos]

With shipping, probably a $65 investment.

Guess IF he is willing to pay at least an attempt fee to cover hardware and time invested (couple of hours for sure) even if the floppies are not accessible, Then why not. Paid in advance of course.

 

[Markverhyden]

As @Porthos said, cash up front. And the less said the better.

Magnetic storage like that definitely has a shelf life. Some claim that it's 20-30 years. Might be an EXTREMELY slim possibility if they were stored in a real archival type space. Which is highly doubtful.

Been sometime since I messed with FD's, like 15 years. Bought one of those large, as in maybe 200, 3.5 FD boxes maybe 20 years ago. Didn't use many, they just sat there. Then in 2010 or so I was doing some Toshiba LT repairs and needed FD boot disks. Started going through them to make some. Like 10% could even be formatted. The one's I did started going bad within 3-5 years.

So chances are pretty slim. If it was me I'd do a $1.50 minimum per disk with a $100 minimum.

 

[sapphirescales]

Nothing beats original hardware. Why take a chance on some cheap Chinese piece of crap? It's more likely to damage the disks than something of that time period. You could pick up an old Windows 95 tower with a 5.25" floppy drive for probably $20. Just take the drive apart and clean/lubricate it before you use it.

I'm surprised you don't still have something from that era you could use. Surely you get these weird requests from time to time, right? I've got a few old PC's and G4/G5 Macs that I can use to work on that old hardware. It just makes sense to keep around. Why get rid of it?

 

[katz]

I'm surprised you don't still have something from that era you could use. Surely you get these weird requests from time to time, right? I've got a few old PC's and G4/G5 Macs that I can use to work on that old hardware. It just makes sense to keep around. Why get rid of it?

I used to keep some older things on hand, I still have a tower that will handle 1.44 disks, but I have limited storage area, so I go through all my stuff from time to time and sell/toss out/donate what isn't being used. In the last 20 years, I think this is the second call I've received for 5 1/4 floppy data recovery.

Your idea of buying an old win 95 tower is better than that device I listed, I agree.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I still have an old tower around here with floppy cables in it for just this purpose. Every 5 years or so I get a doctor or something with a box full of old media he wants me to recover. Pretty easy money honestly, booting up that old rig with linux, mounting a USB device for bulk storage and copying files.

But I do consider it data recovery, and that's $250 to get started, up front... no questions asked and it only includes the first hour of labor, hours after that are billed at the usual offsite rate.

 

[frenchscottie]

Here's a drive on ebay,
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EPSON-SD...826199?hash=item2ae3d223d7:g:KIkAAOSwg~JebTWL
Connecting it to your system might be a problem. That one is from UK but ships to US £60 inc post.

 

[Markverhyden]

I used to keep some older things on hand, I still have a tower that will handle 1.44 disks, but I have limited storage area, so I go through all my stuff from time to time and sell/toss out/donate what isn't being used. In the last 20 years, I think this is the second call I've received for 5 1/4 floppy data recovery.

Your idea of buying an old win 95 tower is better than that device I listed, I agree.

I call that "just in case" stuff. Of course being a pack rat doesn't help. Over the last 15 years I've twice called in two small dumpsters for clean outs. Now that I've moved it was another clean out. Still probably 15% of what I packed into the 16" PODS was just in case stuff related.

 

[Diggs]

I was trying to recover a few 3.5" floppies just a few weeks ago. I finally found an old drive and MB with floppy connector but still got nothing. I never decided if it was the drive, floppies, cable or Linux that wouldn't read them.

I'll agree with @Markverhyden that any floppies that old will probably not be viable.

 

[pcpete]

We have had decent luck with 5.25 floppies. We have two jobs come up in the last year that we had virtually no corruption on them. I am guessing the were at least 25 years old

 

[Philippe]

Things to note:
- 5.25" floppies & drives comes in 2 forms: DD and HD i.e. 360Kb (or lower) and 1.2Mb per disk. Best chance to recover is DD disks in DD drives...
- XP can read 5.25 floppies
- Nothing beat original hardware for compatibility / good recovery. That is any DOS or Win 9x computer.
- Floppies tend to become dirty: be ready to clean your floppy drive (heads) frequently
- As a last resort, I had good success wiping the magnetic surface of the floppies with a mix of cleaning alcohol & distilled water.

 

[sapphirescales]

But I do consider it data recovery, and that's $250 to get started, up front... no questions asked and it only includes the first hour of labor, hours after that are billed at the usual offsite rate.

That's perfectly reasonable. I usually quote these jobs on a case-by-case basis as a flat rate. The last job I did like this was about two months ago. Old court records for a lawyer. I charged $499 for a total of 20 floppies flat rate. 100% recovery. The $499 was payable regardless of what I was able to recover. Took maybe 1 1/2 hours. Then he wanted to data written to 3.5" floppies. I told him that those old floppies weren't a reliable method of long-term storage so I also put all the files on a flash drive and an external hard drive for him just in case he needed the data written to 3.5" floppies again. Total cost was $799.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@sapphirescales You actually had a living breathing human ask you to pull data from old magnetic media, and stuff it back onto old magnetic media?!

The recovery I understand... but to put it back on floppies... ouch I'd have had to put them off for a day just to restrain my inbuilt sarcastic slap reaction before I could even send a professional email!

 

[sapphirescales]

You actually had a living breathing human ask you to pull data from old magnetic media, and stuff it back onto old magnetic media?!

The recovery I understand... but to put it back on floppies... ouch I'd have had to put them off for a day just to restrain my inbuilt sarcastic slap reaction before I could even send a professional email!

LOL. Well it was understandable. The data would only work with an old Windows 95 program. He found an old Windows 95 box from one of the other partners and wanted to run the old software on that. The problem? It didn't have a 5.25" floppy drive, just a 3.5" floppy drive. I could have just installed a 5.25" floppy drive, but I didn't trust those old floppies and I wanted to make sure the data was backed up onto some modern hardware too.

 

[Sky-Knight]

LOL. Well it was understandable. The data would only work with an old Windows 95 program. He found an old Windows 95 box from one of the other partners and wanted to run the old software on that. The problem? It didn't have a 5.25" floppy drive, just a 3.5" floppy drive. I could have just installed a 5.25" floppy drive, but I didn't trust those old floppies and I wanted to make sure the data was backed up onto some modern hardware too.

Ahh that makes sense, USB drive is still a better solution though. But, but USB in Win 95 was on there for the R2 release... I recently got Win95R2 to run in Virtual Box... just as an exercise... might be time to do something similar in this case.

Or, assuming DOS app... whip out DOSBox.