Any util for reading floppies with read errors? - Macintosh Garden

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2011, September 24 - 1:48pm

#1

Protocol 7's picture

Protocol 7

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Any util for reading floppies with read errors?

I've just welcomed a SE/30 into the family and it came with a few programs on original disks. Unfortunately all have at least one disk that is unreadable with Disk Copy 4.2. I've tried them in other macs to be sure it wasn't just the drive being flaky.

I'd really like to try to rip through these faulty disks and see if I can get good backups of them but I don't know what tool can do this. These are mainly 800k disks so I can't just pop them into a PC and run dd. I had a google around but I can't find any floppy-based 68k linux distro that I could use for dd either.

Does anyone have any tips on how I might be able to salvage these disks?

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2011, September 24 - 6:55pm

#2

24bit's picture

24bit

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Joined: 2010 Nov 19

What about SUM?
I recall you could read from devices bypassing the Mac System.
SUM had some kind of default templates for many standard volumes to guess the structure.

2011, September 24 - 8:42pm

#3

Protocol 7's picture

Protocol 7

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I ended up using Copy II to copy the disks to a fresh floppy. The plan then was to run the copies through Disk Copy 4.2 but the original disks ended up working fine. I guess copying them shook them up enough to make them readable again (in most cases anyway).

Sadly it turned out that there's disks missing from each app, so I don't have anything to post here.

2011, September 25 - 1:29am

(Reply to #3) #4

MikeTomTom's picture

MikeTomTom

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@Protocol 7: bad news about the missing disks
Great news about the Mac SE/30 tho' I hope it runs for another 22 years! I'm getting a new-old addition this week too. Really looking forward to getting it under my roof.

2011, September 25 - 11:34am

#5

Protocol 7's picture

Protocol 7

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I think I need to clean the floppy drive as it won't mount (unreadable) or format (verify failed) any disks. Otherwise it's in good shape. No burn-in and no capacitor-related sound issues. Also got a external zip drive with it, which should come in handy.

I want to try A/UX on it

2011, September 25 - 12:41pm

#6

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MCP

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Old floppy drives have their own issues, plus I've encountered floppies that seem to have difficulty being read at first but may or may not become readable after several attempts. This particularly happens with floppies that were not protected from temperature swings, like when they are stored in an attic.