Is there a way to recover data from 3.5 inch floppy?

XP says that the disk is not formatted. It is an old program that used to run in an early version of windows

The disk(ette) itself says: MF 2HD Maxell. It gives the same message whether I use the internal floppy drive, or a USB external floppy drive.

Might it be more likely to "see" the program if it were run on an earlier version of windows (or DOS)?

I tried Run > cmd, but it also said that the disk was not properly formatted. Surely there is some free or reasonably priced software that can solve this.

-HandsOff

 

Create a bootable FD other than the one you're after issues with. Boot from that disk which should create a RAMDISK. Now you should be able to insert the FD that giving you issues and copy the what you need into that RAMDISK and then get another FD to copy that data back to a good one.

 

Thanks, Tipstir! I will try that, although I must admit I have had problems trying to create a bootable floppy with XP in the past, but I don't remember why.

-HandsOff

 

You might want to try a Linux live CD and see if it can read your floppy. Doesn't cost anything except the download time and a blank CD.