Accessing An Old Floppy Disc

[Polly]

I want to open an old file to rework ‘a play what I wrote’. Phill’s old Tosh could recognise my USB Drive but moaned about the disc needing formatting. No joy there then. Any suggestions for extracting the files would be gratefully received. 
All is not lost, I have printed copy and could retype/OCR scan but am keen to recover the files as being less work! 

[YnysMon]

I must admit that I’ve started to wonder if I should try to find another format for files (mostly back up photos) that I’ve been saving on DVD. Isn’t it frightening how quickly formats change?

The last few generations relied on printed photos to capture their memories.Nowadays we seem to be relying on increasingly fleeting formats.

We used to use servers in work...well we still do have them at present, but they will be phased out soon I expect, as we are being encouraged to change our habits and to save things to ‘the cloud’.

The trouble with the cloud is having to pay for any substantial file storage. Basically, I’ve concluded that we (the little people) are yet again being stitched up.

[Regulo]

Google Drive gives you 15 GigaBits free, and Microsoft One Drive gives you another 5 GigaBits free. That's a lot of photos!

[grendel]

there are programs out there that can read hard drives cds and dvds that are unreadable and recover the files from them, i cant remember the one I used to recover a cd for my dad that had lost the description partition, I will see if I can find it

[grendel]

this is a paid for version, they may do a test period that may do the job for you

https://recoverit.wondershare.com/harddrive-recovery/recover-data-from-floppy-disk.html

[grendel]

I think this was the program i used, it was free for personal use when I used it, I see it is $40 now, but if you have a fair number of disks then it may be worthwhile, it depends how much not retyping the script is worth i guess.

https://www.isobuster.com/isobuster.php

 

it might be worth trying a free trial at least to see if the files can be seen, it seems that in a lot of cases the read head of the drive that created the floppy may be misaligned with the head on the floppy reader you are trying to read it with, as the recommended cure is to use the computer that created it, or try multiple floppy drives.

[ChrisB]

I have recovered documents from a number of old 5" floppy discs and the computer that they ran on using ascii files. Ascii files are an unformatted plain text file and will migrate only the text entered by the user. The problem in using any plain DOS text files is they will appear as just that Plain Text, italics, bold face, special fonts etc will be lost which in some circumstances can create nearly as much work as a re-type.

Personally, as long as you can read your play on screen, I would employ "voice to text" software and dictate it into my current bit of kit. Your smart phone may already have the facility. I have it on my Samsung S9 but can not remember if It came loaded or if I installed it.

Back to my holiday from posting.

[Lulu]

Polly, if you send the printed version to me, I will type it up for you on a Word doc.  

[Smoggy]

1 hour ago, ChrisB said:

I would employ "voice to text" software and dictate it into my current bit of kit. Your smart phone may already have the facility.

He's from norfolk! He needs a babelfish not a smartphone.....

Smartphones give every language option except norfolkese.

[Polly]

Thanks so much everyone!!!
I will get on the task again today,  Chris, I used Dragon Dictate for a lot of stuff at one time and should look again as tech has moved on.

Sam you are a star! I may well take up your kind offer if all else fails. 

[ChrisB]

35 minutes ago, Smoggy said:

He's from norfolk! He needs a babelfish not a smartphone.....

Smartphones give every language option except norfolkese.

Only 13 years of my 70... I am Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire man. I still miss the Beech covered hills

[DAVIDH]

Just a recommendation for Google Photos, if you want a "cloud" backup solution. It's FREE, unlimited in space as long as you don't want to store poster sized images, and easy to use. You store your images in albums, which makes them easy to find. You can download them again easily if needed, and opening an account is as easy, as you can use your gmail or other Google logins. You can also store unlimited video too up to 1080p quality, which is the standard for most cameras.