"busted" floppy .. how to retrieve data?

[Maverick2002]

So I my sister was working on a report and (sadly I didn't know this) she decided to save the whole thing on a floppy disk. No hard drive backup, no nada. Floppy. Now the floppy won't work. It opens up in explorer and the Word documents show up, but I can't copy them or open them (get errors). Is there some way to fix/retrieve this data?

Edit: does Word (by any chance) save autosave a working copy of the file somewhere on the hard drive?

 

[diapickle]

i can't believe people are still using floppy to store data today. If the disk is corrupted you are basically out of luck.

Windows saves a temp file in the harddrive if word is still open or not closed properly.

 

[Robor]

Have you tried the floppy in other systems floppy drives? If you have and the floppy is toast you can try searching the HD for the file. Search for *.doc or parts of the file name but I'm guessing she's SOL on this one. Lesson learned: Never, ever, trust important data to a floppy drive. I don't know how many times I've told users that but they still don't listen.

Suggestion on a present for your sister: USB Pendrive

 

[Maverick2002]

We do have a thumb drive and I would have thought she'd save it at least on the hard drive, but I guess not. I feel bad for her but I didn't think anything could really be done either. Yes I tried it on another system as well, no dice.

 

[timswim78]

Try the trial of this. http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/floppy_recovery.asp
If look like your data is saveable, then have your sister/parents/whoever buy the version and recover the data.


You can search for the temporary files that Word creates:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/211632/EN-US/

 

[Looney]

You should always save it in 2 different location. IE HDD and FDD, or HDD and thumbdrive. Oh well, live and learn.