Rescue data from Floppy's

[GTP]

Just had a text/call from a client who has some (about 14) Floppy Disks that contain images of and letters to/from her late mother by/to her late father..
She asked if I get the data from them and back it up to DVD/USb etc.

Unfortunately some of the disks have been sitting in water from a leaking shed roof. Others appear to have been gnawed? Some have an oily substance on them.
Is it possible to remove the platter from the damaged cases and replace them into new cases?
Will this kill the disks entirely?

Obviously the data is very important to her so should I even try?

Not really sure what to charge if I do try.

Should I just recommend her to a data recovery house?

Should I try but offer no guarantee on the results?

TIA

 

[sapphirescales]

Floppy disks are simple compared to modern hard drives, flash drives, and SSD's. You can even take a floppy that's been cut up into pieces using scissors and tape it back together to get part of the data back. That being said, I would still contact a data recovery company and get their opinion on the disks if the data is that important to her. I would also ask her if there are any other places the data could actually be (like on a old hard drive or something). If all else fails and she can't afford a data recovery company, you can definitely try to recover it for her. But just make sure she signs a liability release and that she understands there are no guarantees.

 

[Sky-Knight]

3.5" floppies have a dust rag inside that cleans the disk, they're perfectly ok to make contact with air, they live that way after-all.

That being said... if they were stored outside of climate controlled conditions the odds of getting anything aren't good. But yeah, you can transplant media to try if the shells are too gross to clean.

Just don't get too close to anything magnetic!

And everything above is good advice as well.

 

[Diggs]

The water, oil(?) and dirt don't really bother them much as long as they are cleaned before reading. Age is the battle here. The magnetics on the media is going to be failing. I've never tried data recovery from a floppy before. As @sapphirescales said, they are remarkably forgiving physically.

 

[Markverhyden]

Floppies are very different than HD's. Much more like tape media. As mentioned surface contamination is not that big of a deal as long as it's properly cleaned.

What is a very real problem is the degradation of the strength of the magnetic field for each bit, 1 or 0. And that is very random.

Several years ago I was testing reading Apple/Mac OS, that is Motorola and PPC based systems, formatted floppies in modern OS X. I probably had 25% disk failure. Similar with trying to read old Linux formatted as well as MS formatted. And the OEM of the disk does matter. I had one of those big boxes of 3.5" from some big box. Needed to burn a Toshiba Test and Diag floppy for a repair. Must have gone through 10 disks to get one that would. If I tried Teac's or Sony's they were much more reliable.

Talk to a DR company to get some pricing brackets and let the customer decide. If she does not want to pay then I'd give it a go. On the nibbled stuff. Doubtful you can do anything with that unless you have the proper controller and software to manipulate the head. Data can be recovered on damaged floppies. I remember reading an article years ago about DR and they mentioned a case where some guy was convicted of murdering his wife. The evidence was on a 5.25 and he had cut it up with scissors but they were still able to piece together enough stuff evidence.

 

[fencepost]

Only the internal media really matters, so on the nibbled ones unless that's what was damaged it probably won't matter.

It's also worth keeping in mind that not all floppy drives are going to be the same. It's quite possible that a disk that can't be read in drive A will read in drive B. You may also find information in retro gaming discussion groups, particularly things like "Drives from manufacturer C are best" and "Use Software Y to get a raw image of the floppy, then use Software Z to try to mount it."

If they're from older Macs you may also have issues, per Wikipedia Apple supported (though eventually mostly dropped use of) a system to have more sectors per track on the outer sections of drives, but this required a variable-speed motor that basically nothing else used so those disks were unreadable except on Apple systems.

 

[glricht]

It's also worth keeping in mind that not all floppy drives are going to be the same. It's quite possible that a disk that can't be read in drive A will read in drive B.

Back in the day, ran into this all the time. The drive's heads would get out of alignment and any floppies written by the drive were often unreadable by another drive. Reverse was also true: floppies written by another drive often could not be read by the first drive. Adds a whole level of complexity to the issue.

 

[GTP]

Hey all, thanks for the replies - much appreciated.
Some of the disks look pristine apart from being wet, so they shouldn't be a problem.
Others appear have been gnawed by some small animal. (rats?) Although it'looks to only be the edge of the outside case that's been chewed.
The ones with the oily stuff on them (I think) appears to be rat pee.

My main fear is that they were stored in the same box as some electrical stuff. A couple of old clock radios, an ancient Transistor radio and a pile of AA/AAA and 9V batteries.

Would these have any effect on them?

She reiterated to me how important they are so I have spoken to her at length about it and suggested a professional data recovery.

I will get an estimate for her on Tuesday. (Public Holiday here today).

 

[lcoughey]

Don't expect floppy disk recovery to be cheaper than hard drive recovery. For me, I'd be quoting each floppy as a separate case where it could be $350 or $900 for each disk, depending on how far we would have to go to get the disk in a condition to image and then recover. You'll also need to consider their capacity and formatting. Not all floppy disks are 1.44MB formatted FAT12.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Funny timing for the thread, just a couple of weeks ago while cleaning out one of my old storage boxes at the office (to throw out TONS of old stuff) I stumbled on an old floppy disk of pictures I had. Back then, was taken with one of those old Kodak C-110 pocket cameras that I had..I think. It was a camera where I had to send the film in to be developed anyways. I knew this disk had some pics of an prior boat I had, and of an antique boat parade I was in, and a couple of organized off-road Jeep runs I had back back then.

I figured it was doomed. First...where to find a floppy drive? No internal ones in any PCs we have anymore...but we have a few external USB based floppy drive units. So I grabbed one...and my Win10 workstation...prompted to format the disk. Ugh! Grabbed a different external USB floppy drive...initially same thing..but I did eject..and then popped it in again..and I think a 3rd time..and BOOM, it opened up, and I quickly copied all my pics off of the 3.5" disk.

 

[HCHTech]

You can even take a floppy that's been cut up into pieces using scissors and tape it back together to get part of the data back.

I think I read past this the first time. I would like to see this. I would imagine if you taped one side, you might be able to read the other, but the area of the tape itself would have to be unreadable, so it had better be some thin, skinny tape and you would have to be awfully lucky. Some Googling shows this is apparently possible - here's one story, I would love to see the process.

 

[Your PCMD]

I have an original Windows 3.11 set that still work to this day. All 24 disks. And they stay outside in a shed in Texas heat.

 

[GTP]

Just an update.
After exhaustive discussion with the client it was decided (based on professional recovery estimate) that I should try to recover data from eight of the wet but physically undamaged disks.
After carefully drying them in a box of collected silica gel desiccant paks, very low heat setting on a hairdryer and some outside cleaning they were good to go.
The other six will be sent for assessment and a cost estimate by professional recovery.

Today.
I have successfully recovered all data from the 8 disks! Some of the disks would not read on the first attempt but after ejecting and reinserting they were totally readable.
Unfortunately though, some of the files were created in a long dead editing program that she does't remember the name of. They have a .pot extension which I think is a Powerpoint 97 template?
Most of the documents (letters) were created in Word 97, so are readable.
The several .jpg's and .bmp's are fine.

The client is now awaiting the assessment for the other 6.

As the content of the disks was obscure from failing memory, with only the label description for prompts, she was overjoyed to see the content I recovered.
She is anticipating a good result from the other six.

Thanks all for the input.

 

[GTP]

Ahead of you! Just got LibreOffice installed on her PC, they opened in Impress.
But thanks for the advice.

 

[frase]

Awesome news Barcelona - love doing forensic work