How to open and archive old 3.5 photo floppies with Windows XP?

<p>Greetings, I've researched throughout the web where many had posted a similar question, but without generating much response. I thought perhaps I should try here for starters, since it deals with photos. Recently I found several old 3.5 floppies (2HD IBM 1.44 3.5) from a storage box which had been lost and forgotten about. All of them contain photos from 2000-2001 that had been taken with a Sony Digital Mavica FD-73. They had all been formatted for the Sony camera and stored in a good climate controlled environment. I'm still using the same CPU set up (a Dell Dimension 8300 purchased in 2003) which has a 3.5 floppy drive. In 2003 I was using the standard OS Windows Home Edition XP (2002) and had no issues <em>THEN</em> with opening (Sony Mav) 3.5 floppies and pulling photos and tranferring them all to disk. For some reason however, my Windows XP will no longer open the floppies, much to the credit it seems of the auto SP2 and SP3 updates downloaded over the past. Now when you insert a 3.5 floppy into the drive, Windows XP says the "disk is not formatted". It seems the updated Windows XP version will <em>now</em> only read FAT format. What can I do to open my 3.5 floppies, that's short of reformatting back to the original Windows XP (2002) OS? Which is not a likely to happen. Maybe some of you know, or can assist in this matter. Any advice or tip will be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>Charles </p>

<p>You need a Nerd Armed With Linux to stop by. There are a number of Linux distros that can boot right from a CD (without molesting your hard drive) which can then in turn read from various older media formats. Slax might do it... hard to say without some more serious digging around. But the idea is: temporarily wake up your machine into a different operating system, grab the files, and get out.</p>

<p>One idea is to buy and install an external 3.5" floppy drive. You can get one of these from Best Buy electronics stores. They come with the necessary drivers, which you install on your old computer. Once that's been done, you should be able to insert and read old 3.5" floppy disks, as longs as they were formatted with Windows compatible file systems, like Fat. Make sure the new drive is working correctly though, before putting in one of your picture floppies. Take a scratch floppy, load it up, and see if you can re-format it, and then try copying some files to a from it. When you are confident the new drive is working OK, then try accessing one of your picture disks.</p>

<p>Another idea is to make a visit to your local Public Library, use their PC's, and see if they have any that still have a 3.5" floppy drive installed. Spend a couple hours, transfer the pictures OFF the old floppies and onto a small external USB hard-drive. Then, when you get home, use your home computer to read the small external USB hard drive, and burn the picture files to CD-R or DVD. Make at least 2 copies, one is your working set and the other is your backup set.</p>

 

<p>According to Sony the Mavic used the FAT system for discs; XP should be able to read it. Can your computer read any other floppies? If not, perhaps your floppy drive is broken. If it can, perhaps the discs have deteriorated since 2003.</p>

<p>Here is a link <a href="http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=MVCFD73">http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=MVCFD73</a><br>

click on Manuals Operating Instructions.</p>

<p>One can use a 5 1/4" Floppy drive with XP; it has to be a modern 1.2 meg unit; it will read the older coarser track pitch floppies; but only format 1.2meg 5 1/4 units.<br>

With newer 3 1/2 " floppies; many millions of XP computers came with a built in 3 1/2 " floppy drive. XP came out in 2001; it is going on 8 years old.</p>

<p> Try the floppies on other folks 3 1/2" drives; isolate the issue; bad floppies; or no actual data.</p>

<p>Mr. Peed... <br>

<br />I bought a USB 3 1/2" floppy drive that was plug and play on both XP and Vista without software install. It reads my old single sided, single density disks of 360mb up to the 1.44s from the MSDOS era. </p>

<p>Mr. Flanigan...</p>

<p>5 1/4 inch floppy? Could you be showing your age or did your parents tell you about them? I'm so old that I thought 8" floppies to be a lightning fast alternative to the punch cards and tape drives. </p>

<p>Tom</p>

<p>XP is so old it didnt even support usb 2.0 when it came out; or even drives above 137 megabytes. Some folks had XP machines with both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppies. Several years after we got our first XP box with a P4 1.5 GHZ box with a 60 meg HDA; we got a 32meg USB flash drive for 120 bucks; now a 2gig USB 2.0 drive is 5 bucks at Walmart. Before usb flash drives were out floppies were the norm; plus Zip drives; plus CD's too.</p>

<p>Oh the zip drive...</p>

<p>My XP pro runs floppies fine. If you're drive isn't reading I think your best option is to hunt ebay for a functional USB Floppy drive which you can plug into your computer and open the floppies that way. Good luck copying the files off. You'll be there all day.</p>

<p>the advice is correct xp should read the floppies<br>

a 2000-2001 3.5" floppy should still be good<br>

try other floppies in the drive.<br>

especially if you have any from old operasting systems 720k or 1.44meg<br>

if the system is set to boot from floppy, it will either do so or go right by(ignore)if the drive is bad.<br>

wiggle the connetor, mine gets loose at least once a month.<br>

if the disks can be read and copied on a friends older pc, set up a spare hard disk<br>

and copy the files to it.<br>

and plug that into your xp machine.l<br>

the only compatibility is rare very early 5.25" floppies formatted with early DOS versions sometimes<br>

cannot be read by new os. but this goes way back to the late 1980's or early 1990's Not applicable in your case.<br>

be sure the floppy slot is horizontal and try ( with another floppy) clicking it in solidly. the mecanics of the drive may be sticky.<br>

( some floppy drive are troublesome when mounted vertically)</p>

<p>" do all the cheap things first before you spend any money</p>

 

<p>My XP PC (built in 2003) has never had trouble reading any floppy, regardless of file system. Even with newer service packs windows will read my 720k 3.5" floppies fine. My guess is your drive is malfunctioning, with lack of use the dust will just kind of pile in there. Is it possible that the discs have been exposed to a magnetic field? I have seen programs that can be used to recover data from 'unreadable' hard drives and flash, so my guess is such a program could work on floppies too, although these programs range from easy ($$$) to complex and confusing (free). Let us know what you end up finding out!<br>

CRK</p>

<p>I agree with the above post: I think your old floppy drive has had it. Get one of the USB 3.5 inch drives; I got mine at Radio Shack some time ago for about 40 bucks.</p>

<p>BUT: Don't try any more floppies in that drive! You might be ruining your floppies in the process! Try a floppy that's not so important on another drive, verify everything works, then try it on yours -- but only test with a floppy you don't mind losing!</p>

<p>It's more likely that your floppies are okay than that your drive is okay after sitting this long. I've had several internal floppies expire just from lack of use (and probably dust, lubricant hardening, whatever).</p>

<p>And yes, I have a few 8-inch floppies stored somewhere (no drive though). They're formatted for Compugraphic EditWriter 7500 (a terrific typesetting machine in its day!) and for CompSet 3510/4510 (not so terrific -- ask me how!).</p>

<p>Also have a batch of 5-1/4" pc floppies, many 3.5-inch, Colorado Tape Drive, Zip Drive, and on ad nauseam.</p>

<p>The box most of it is stored in might be called "Mike's Museum". Come on by; admission's two bucks!</p>

<p>Thanks guys! Indeed the floppy drive had quite turned into a dust bucket over time. I removed and disassembled it yesturday; thouroughly and carefully cleaning it's internals. I was hopeing to maybe avert (Ok....so me and Walter are cheap-skates) purchase of a new external model, but it seems most of you already knew it was a <em>gone-ER.</em> While it appeared the driver was operating (moving) properly when inserting a disk, it would generate a slow response when assessing it's "properties" with "right-click". It pleases me however to learn that XP is not the culprit. I will benefit in more ways than one when purchasing a new external drive, as it seems I'll also have to have it when I update to a SATA HD using the original XP (SP-1) reinstallation CD from Dell. While the MB has SATA plug-ins, the software supposedly won't boot them. Nevertheless, I will post an update on whether or not it will open my photo floppies when I get one. Thanks again for your help on the matter. <br>

Charles </p>

<p>Why bother with an external. Internal floppy drives are available and inexpensive:<br>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16821103116">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16821103116</a></p>

<p>Most mother boards, including the latest X58 boards, still have a floppy connector. Floppy has nothing to do with either IDE or SATA; it is a different connector. </p>

<p>I recommend you install the internal floppy since you can boot off it.</p>

 

<p>I've got a 3.5" floppy drive on an XP box that reads some pretty old disks. If you have problems with just one disk then it's probably the disk. If you can't read any of them then the drive may have gone south, or heaven forbid the disks are all toast.</p>

<p>Find a friend with a computer that has a floppy. I'm sure you know someone.</p>

<p><em>" do all the cheap things first before you spend any money"</em></p>

<p>UPDATE: Just for the sake of update, I replaced the floppy drive with a duplicate (NOS) model drive and all works swell. As most of you had stated, it apparently had <em>nothing </em>to do with Windows software or XP updates. It's been an adventure opening the decade old floppies and seeing imaged that I had forgotten about. I am so glad to have salvaged these when I did, and it's hard to believe how far we have advanced since these pre mega-pixel images. One floppy bears some historical value. It's only has two images, but it of debris form the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster which had landed debris over much of the East Texas area. These photos were taken prior to the items being collected by the local authorities. </p><div></div>