How can I open a file from a floppy disk?

Question

How do I recover the text from a damaged document on a floppy disk? I had the floppy disk in the A drive and the CDRW disk on the E drive - for some reason when I opened the A drive it won’t read the file. It lists the file on the floppy but MSword97 doesn’t recognize it - claims missing '. doc. file, but it has the .doc extension. I tried auto recovery on MS word and it came back could not recover.

Any ideas how I can get this file to open?

Thanks for your Help

Michele Rando

Scottsdale, AZ

Answer

This question was answered on November 28, 2005. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

The floppy disk maybe formatted to a different OS (like Windows 95). The disk needs to be reformatted to be useable by a different OS; however you will lose all data on it if you reformat. If the floppy disk is format to the correct OS, then the disk or drive maybe damaged. Try using different disks and drive to test this. To recover data from an unformatted or damaged disk I recommend Norton Utilities for the job.

Author

Posted by Nathan of Chandler-Gilbert Community College on November 28, 2005