Archive floppy ibm not formatted

[781tim]

Hello,

I am trying to archive some floppy disks IBM formatted, circa 1994. But the windows Floppy drive says that the disks are unformatted so it can't read them.
Microsoft Support suggested reformatting the floppy, but I've always assumed reformatting wiped the pre-existing data. Which I want to archive. So how should I recover this data?
I'm not very computer literate so talk of bios taggs & so forth in other forums went way over my head.

 

[noidea_77]

Try another floppy drive! Either the format of the disks - is it 1.44MB or an older format? - is not supported by the drive, or it is a mechanical problem. That happens if the read/write head is not properly adjusted, in this case most likely was not adjusted as the disks were written. Ah and yes, formating will delete the data.

 

[smorizio]

as the other poster has said could be a drive read issue. if there old 5 inch floppy they may have failed from age.

 

[noidea_77]

as the other poster has said could be a drive read issue. if there old 5 inch floppy they may have failed from age.

Or maybe written in CPM or another format, that is unreadable for windows.

 

[smorizio]

they may not even be dos could be fortran disk