5 inch floppies

[George N. White III]

On Sat, 3 Sep 2005, Michael Hennebry wrote:

>
> I'm trying to read some old (duh) 5 inch
> floppies with a borrowed drive on an FC3 box.
> Probabaly there is more than one format,
> but I'm not sure which has which.
> The usual result is that I can read the
> directory by clicking on a KDE icon,
> but get I/O errors when trying to read any of the files.
> Trying to mount with a mount command also results
> in an I/O error.
> If I couldn't read the directory,
> I'd suppose that I was out of luck.
> Is there a reason that the directory
> would be easier to read than the files?
> Any ideas on how to read the files?

I've seen this behaviour with old floppies -- I suspect there is a bad or 
marginal area on the disk.  Since the data typically take much more space 
than the directory, the chances of a bad spot zapping data are much 
higher.  You should try a different drive -- old drives are even less 
reliable than old floppies.

-- 
George N. White III  <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>