FLOPPY DISK

frank_f15 · Jan 14, 2004

yesterday i took a bunch of pics of some stuff i am thinking of selling, took them off camera and onto desktop. some of them i posted in another thread , then i deceided to MOVE THEM to a floppy disk, dedicated to those pics. today when i went to acess the pics all the drive does is search and make noise, the pics show as icons but i cant do anything with them, basically useless. i guess i will have to shoot them again. the question is WHAT HAPPENED? other floppys work fine so it is not the drive.any ideas?

thcri · Jan 14, 2004

Frank,

Try the floppies in another puter. I have found that drives do get out of whack some and they work on some disks and some just don't quite make it. Another good thing to do with floppies before you ever use them is to format them with the drive that you will be using the floppy on the most. But if you want my honest opinion?? Find another way of transfering files other than floppies. Get a CD recorder and you have much better luck or even get a memory stick. My last five computers that I have bought for work don't even have floppy drives anymore. They just are too slow, can't hold much for pictures anymore and they don't last.

murph

PineRidge · Jan 14, 2004

We use a Zip 250 USB drive. One disk holds the equivalent of a couple of hundred 3-1/4 floppy disks. The drive unplugs from one computer via a USB cable and quickly attachés to another computer. Try one, you'll like it! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

frank_f15 · Jan 14, 2004

murph: don't know why i put them on floppy, as i have a zip drive and a cd burner. usually just use floppys for small stuff or for giving away things. guess i had a senior moment /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

frank_f15 · Jan 14, 2004

see my previous post, don't know why i deceided to use floppy /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif, as i said i have a zip disk , and cd burner. iusuallytake photos and put them on zips, then play with them and then burn them for archiving.

MossRoad · Jan 15, 2004

Sorry to hear of your troubles. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

To prevent it in the future... never use the move command. Always use the copy command. Then test the media that you copied it to before destroying the original file(s). The move command is dangerous because if it fails your file is toast. It won't happen with the copy command.

Also, floppies are good for transporting stuff from place to place, but not acceptable for permanent storage. CDs are better, cheap and much less likely to get hosed. ZIP disks are almost as bad as floppies for permanent storage. We use to keep stuff on ZIP disk at work, but have all but eliminated them for CDs and DVDs. We also had a few instances of ZIP disk click of death. Here's a link to a google search for Iomega click death. Some very interesting stuff. Read some of these stories and you'll think twice about keeping stuff on ZIP disks. Always make at least two disks. One for use and one for archive.

For our digital family photos, I burn two CDs, test them both, keep one at home and take one to work for safe keeping.

Again, sorry about your troubles. Hopefully you can read them in another PC. /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

thcri · Jan 15, 2004

Frank,

At work I use a program called Connected. We back up somewhere in the neighbor hood of 300 meg to this company. The first back up takes for ever but from then on every night the computer connects and only backs up new files and file changes. You can select the files or directories that you want backed up. If a failure on your computer comes along you can then download anything back or order a CD rom. The price is fairly cheap, if you have a dial up connection I don't think I would use it but it looks like it is $80.00 per year.

At work here is has been pretty reliable and my insurance company gave me a deduct on my insurance for having it.

Just something to think about, I may even do it myself for at home but I already keep my personal stuff on my computer at work so I kind of get it free right now. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Connected

JASTN70D · Jan 15, 2004

Frank

We have a 50% failure on new floppies. Not the drive just junk floppies. By the way did you check your recycle bin for the files.?

WVBill · Jan 15, 2004

Frank: this won't help you get your pictures back but I suspect you may have removed the floppy from the drive before the system finalized the move command and wrote the final file data to the floppy. This would leave the floppy with information ABOUT the pictures but not all of the picture data itself.

Sorry.