I have a stack of about 30 floppy disks (3.5" type) that have some old childhood memories on them. However, I'm putting them into my random "cheapo" USB floppy drive and every single one is coming back blank.
I know that floppies do go bad after a while, and it has been about 15-20 years, but all 30? These disks are from various manufacturers and batches, so I suspect my drive just has a higher tolerance for the magnetic domains on the disks.
Does anyone know which drive is best for reading old floppies? I just need to get the data once, and then I'll copy them onto my hard drive. The drive doesn't have to be USB — I'll even take a regular floppy bus drive and then get some sort of adapter if needed.
Best Answer
I would say if the disks are good, any drive should work. I would find a second drive and test them, kind of like a "2nd opinion". If they're still not reading, then it's probably the disks.
As well, if the disks were stored near a magnet (speaker, etc), it's possible something like that could have corrupted the data.