My gf recently saved all her projects to a floppy and now when she tries to access the drive with that disk in it , it asks you to format it the disk. i can go to the properties of it and when i do it shows the file type as raw, the disk as full but with 0mb of data on the disk. I think the disk is shot is there any way to save the data?
i did try a copy and a backup to no avail
thanks

Try it in one or two other computers. If you get the same result, it's most likely trash.

I've noticed that a floppy only goes bad when there's very important stuff on it! Otherwise, they can last for years.

yea we tried tht too. no dice. thanks for the help!

All here projects? That sounds like she needs to get the stuff back. It should be worth an effort, why not try to get the data back by using any of all theese tools available, like getdataback, or some old thing like Norton Utils.

If you store floppies net to a monitor the electomagnetic discharge from the monitor will be enough to render the floppy usless if exposed for a while. Its best to backup onto a CD if you have important data on there. If you format it it should work again.

Hold it. Don't format until you are comfortable with the thought of losing everything on the floppy. First consider a serious attempt to get the data back (if your girlfriends all project is important to her...)

Have to ask, Is this a XP machine having problems with the floppy? Think it may be a bug in XP. Have 3 machines here that ever since switching to XP the floppy is hit and miss. Doesn't matter what I try floppies are very dangerouse to use. Try booting with a DOS disk, switch floppies and see if data is on the disk. I can use mine in DOS, or any other OS that is on machine, just not in XP. Know of others that have the same problem. Worth a check to see.
Oh yeah, as long as I use formatted disks usually work alright (not all the time), but when I do have to forrmat it will definately be screwed up.

I remember many problems with my floppy in XP

Now all is ok but I have to buy a new floppy ;)

Try it in a non XP PC :lol:

You could also try NDD norton disk doktor for dos.
But you need a dos or win 9x machine for this one.

Rescued many disks before they went into the scrap bin.

Use EasyRecovery 6.03 to recover your floppy.....worked 2 times of 2 when I had to recover some important stuff from our company's accountant... :)