Legacy Storage Data Recovery
Microsoft’s Bill Gates: Sprawled over a desk lobbing a floppy disk around as if it was a frisbee.
It’s this sort of cavalier attitude which leads to data loss!
It would be fair to say that CDR – Manchester Data Recovery Services – does not receive a high volume of calls regarding the recovery of data from 3.5-inch floppy disks. However, we do still get asked to recover data from these, even though computers have not shipped with a floppy disk drive as standard for several years. The data stored on these tend to relate to machine specific data; for example, previously we received a floppy disk in which contained data to the boot-up sequence of a car re-spray equipment for a Mercedes garage based in Liverpool. Currently, we are working on a floppy disk which contains audio/composition files from a Yamaha keyboard.
Bad sectors on a floppy disk
As per hard disk drives and flash NAND devices, floppy disks can have areas of the storage media which becomes unreadable. Correct handling, cleaning and repair and use of appropriate recovery software can lead to a full recovery of the required data.
I don’t think there will be many people out there who will lament the demise of the floppy disk. Low capacity even for its time, prone to getting clogged up with fluff and dirt from being stored in pockets, and generally not very reliable. I expect we will certainly not miss the terribly weak double entendres regarding floppy and hard disks which seem to prevail in the mid-1990s as computer technology became more mainstream.
Floppy disk drives can play music – Ghostbusters!
What CDR does miss is the distinct mechanical noise that floppy disk drives make. You certainly felt that your data was being accessed. There’s little use for floppy disk drives these days, but below we have exhibited one inventive use. It involves altering the frequency of the floppy disk drive stepper motor to produce a certain pitch of sound. Enjoy.