3.5 Disk Dilemma...

3.5 Disk? WTF is that?
We use CDs beeyotch!!!

 

I think you can kiss the documents goodbye.

You can use a flash drive with a Celeron...

 

I'm going to guess the primary FAT (File Allocation Table) is corrupted. This is a little secret file which tells the computer where the little bits of all the files on the disk are stored. But don't panic, DOS puts a secret second one on there too, as a backup.

A non invasive check would be to insert the disk (don't format it!) and in Explorer, right click on the A: icon and select 'Properties' at the bottom. Select 'tools', then select'error checking'. This does a quick looksee at the FAT table and fixes obvious errors.

 

Hey, when you spend all of your cash on Ferrari stuff, new PCs are hard to come by.

Frankly, I'd rather have the Ferrari stuff too!

Sorry to hear about your problems Carb.

 

www.dell.com

 

What if you bought one of these, saved your stuff from your laptop on it, then connected it to your pc...

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=110&Language=en

I have one..works like a charm..that is, as long as you have USB on both your pc and laptop. A little more money than a 1 gig flash drive but can come in handy when moving data from one place to another

 

Or a cheaper alternative, depending on the amount of data you want to transfer:

http://www.xdrive.com/

 

Can we clarify a bit here? Are the originals on the laptop hard drive, and just copies on the floppy are messed up, or are the originals on the floppy, and no copies exist?

Edit: I'm going offline for a bit, but the reason I ask is that if it is the latter, I would not touch the disk. I would promptly get it to a professional data recovery service, who will probably be able to recover most of what is on it. Serching dexonline under "data recovery" finds two in Norcross and one in Marietta. You might find something closer depending on exactly where you live.

 

Get a USB....thing.

 

Carbon,

I've never heard of the need for a 'pentium' to use a USB device, but I could be wrong of course (I'm running an AMD as I type). I have had to load device specific drivers for each USB device, though, as I still run Windows98, and they all work fine (Agfa scanner, Lexar flash stick, and now my brandy new Western Digital USB hard drive).

Sooo, if you HAVE a USB port, you should be able to use either a USB stick or HD to move the data off the old laptop. If it's stuff on a floppy though, and its important to you, you should call a recovery shop to see what it might cost.

While doing that, you could search the Microsoft Knowledgebase:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;131690

We need more info - what operating system are you running?

 

And, um, are you sure your trying the right one? They all look alike you know....
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You could get a copy of 'laplink' and use the serial port:

http://www.laplink.com/products/filemover/overview.asp
http://www.laplink.com/products/cables/overview.asp

I'm sure there are freeware/shareware programs which do the same thing if you have time to look.

Cheers,
Jon

 

USB Jump Drives is where its at

 

4GB in one little drive, talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

Hate to see you leave that in your pockets and have it go through washer and dryer. Bye bye 4GB of data!

 

LOL, if it wasn't that important.... it probably was worth washing

I keep one on the keychain and another in my undisclosed location as mentioned in the 'What would you take' thread.

 

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LOL...classic, CMY

 

There is this software http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/floppy_recovery.asp?rid=google&kid=gc2107

 

Set up a gmail account for storage. You can actually make it look like a drive on your computer, where you drag and drop files.

http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

 

Media, especially floppies, can only be used so many times. The problem is how it is magentized. It isn't exactly written with divits of ones and zeros like a cdrom would. Since it is magnetized, it can easily be demagnetized and that can be done with time and wear. While the medium isn't on a platter itself, it is a thin sheet, which does deteriorate from use - just like all media seems to.

Best of luck in getting it working again. And if you need to back up something cheaply, just burn it to a CDR, label it and pack it away. Better yet, get a tape backup unit, which is built for this purpose.