Cannot access floppy disk without formatting it!!?!?

[Joshc85]

Hi,

A long time ago, when people still commonly used floppy disks, I stored many diaries and most importantly writing pieces (books authored by me) in a couple of Verbatim floppy disks. I've just found them accidently in my garage and I wish to access them on my computer.

Whenever I connect the floppy discs with a floppydisk-usb reader/cord into my laptop, I get a message popped onto my screen saying

"You need to format the disk in drive A: before you can use it."

I know that formatting the disk with erase all the stored files. That is the problem.
Can anyone help me? The files inside mean alot to me. Thanks!

 

[squirrelonfire]

It could be windows bs or your floppies are fried. Try using the Hiren CD and read it off mini Windows or Linux

 

[Joshc85]

they are not fried. They have been well stored and still look brand new.

 

[ss202sl]

I've seen where some drives can read floppies while others had issues. You might try a different floppy drive. See if you can find someone with an older machine that may still have one and try it on that machine.

 

[Joshc85]

they are not fried. They have been well stored and still look brand new.

 

[Joshc85]

they are not fried. They have been well stored and still look brand new.

 

[Joshc85]

they are not fried. They have been well stored and still look brand new.

 

[swifty_morgan]

floppy's can be a pain anymore. sometimes you need something other than a new usb floppy drive........ like the "old" ones. ide.

sometimes running on xp helps vs w7/vista, etc. like dvd/cd's, once in a while you get a disk that won't run it unless it was on the same drive that made it.

let me know what works for you.

 

[ram1009]

Just because you can't see the damage doesn't mean they aren't damaged beyond readability. Try different drives. Older floppy drives were much better made than recent ones. This is a common problem.

 

[haska]

Try winhex