I have lots of 1.44MB floppy disks I used back in college (plus a few from high school) which I just stored away safely in a box. But then when I checked them out recently I didn't really think the files in it would somehow be corrupted overtime!
After college I got so busy and didn't really have the time to transfer the files in my floppies to somewhere else, like a CD or some PC hard disk folder. So when I did get the time to check out my old files (because I needed some file) I discovered most of them needed to be formatted already! And I really hated it!
I even worried and panicked a bit because I'd lose all the files I had in them. I really had to get the files back without formatting them. So I still kept them in a box while I thought of how I could recover them (or even fix them!). It took me weeks & months to realize maybe there was some program/software that recovers old files from floppy disks. And so, to recover all those files, I decided to search the web for floppy file recovery programs just so I could somehow salvage or get the files I couldn't access anymore.
After searching and sifting through a lot of programs, I tried out several of them and finally found one that seemed okay. When I finally got the time to concentrate on recovering my files from those floppies I realized it's really such a hassle because:
- I had to run a virus scan on the diskettes before I run the software for file recovery.
- Even though I don't think doing that has a point, since most of them aren't accessible anymore so why bother with the virus scan eh, but then again it's better to be safe than sorry.
- The diskettes took quite a bit of time to respond to the program and it was making machine noises all the while. It took me half a day to finish I don't know how many diskettes but they were a lot!
- And then I realized after I finished them that I'd have to reorganize the folders they're in so I can get rid of the useless files and then arrange them for burning. Ah but CDs or DVDs aren't safe either eh? But at least they can last longer than diskettes before they get corrupted or something.
Anyway, it's really great that there are softwares that do file recovery, otherwise I'd have wasted all of those old files I had.
Sadly I had around 10 diskettes that didn't respond to the file recovery program I used, but at least I got a lot of my old files back so now I feel quite happy and content.
But still, it's such a hassle... *sigh* And I still haven't reorganized the files until now.
