floppys & diskettes

[DPaul]

Hi,
Do we know of a python module that can do recovery of diskette & floppy files.
I recieved somebody's life's genealogy work on those media, and +/- 30% I cannot read. (about 30 of a 100)
Win 11 shows the diskette (& floppy) drive as a:\. A lot of commercial softwares do not even see a:\.
I have reasons to believe that the files are recoverable.
thx,
Paul

[Gribouillis]

The first thing to do is to create an image of the floppy disk on your hard drive. In Linux, you can do this with the dd command. This old blog post says that you can do the same in cygwin.

Search Recover floppy disk data with a search engine. This is not a Python question. Answers such as this one may help a lot.

[DPaul]

The first thing to do is to create an image of the floppy disk on your hard drive. In Linux, you can do this with the dd command. This old blog post says that you can do the same in cygwin.

Search Recover floppy disk data with a search engine. This is not a Python question. Answers such as this one may help a lot.

It would seem that I have my work cut out for this monday.
Thanks, I'll look into it immediately.
Paul

[DPaul]

After spending a few hours like "Alice in Wonderland" (= cygwin, linux),
I got as far as this: ddrescue finds the exact file on the a: diskette, but has a permission problem.

Output:
$ ddrescue -f a:/*.*  d:/recovered
GNU ddrescue 1.27
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
     ipos:        0 B, non-trimmed:        0 B,  current rate:       0 B/s
     opos:        0 B, non-scraped:        0 B,  average rate:       0 B/s
non-tried:   500224 B,  bad-sector:        0 B,    error rate:       0 B/s
  rescued:        0 B,   bad areas:        0,        run time:          2s
pct rescued:    0.00%, read errors:        0,  remaining time:         n/a
                              time since last successful read:         n/a
Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 1 (forwards)
ddrescue: a:/REG91MDW.DBF: Fatal error reading the input file: Permission denied

Any suggestions?
thx,
paul

[Gribouillis]

Try as super user / administrator

In linux, use sudo command

[DPaul]

Try as super user / administrator

Eventually, I got this working with the following syntax:

Output:
cygstart --action=runas ddrescue a:/*.* d:/recovery/recovered

I guess I have to test them all, because the first 2 yielded no output file.
These things are al least 20-25 years old, so no warranty any more.
thx,
Paul

[Gribouillis]

You can perhaps use a tool such as ddrescueview to see what was rescued, this program is linked in ddrescue gnu page, which is worth reading too I think, as well as the manual.

Ddrescue is like any other power tool. You need to understand what it does, and you need to understand some things about the machines it does those things to, in order to use it safely.

[DPaul]

You can perhaps use a tool such as ddrescueview to see what was rescued,

Downloaded it, tested it on a floppy, and it replies : "Status: " " not available".
I will need to spend much more time on this to understand what is going on.
My plan is:
- Test the 25 failing diskettes with normal GNU ddrescue, maybe something happens, if only with a few.
- Buy a floppy reader from amazon and try the same as with the diskettes
- Examine what I have so far, because just maybe one of the diskettes contains a backup
of the previous ones...you never know..
I've seen that the earliest diskette dates from 1993, maybe the floppys are even older!
thx,
Paul

[Gribouillis]

tested it on a floppy, and it replies : "Status: " " not available".

I think you need to use ddrescue with a mapfile because ddrescueview reads the mapfile. Using a mapfile is recommended in the manual. See how to invoke ddrescue here.

[DPaul]

Using a mapfile is recommended in the manual. See how to invoke ddrescue

Hi, I tried about everything, including mapfile, but to no avail.
I may be doing something wrong (very possible) or the diskettes are really not recoverable this way.
I have tried also two leading commercial products: one has no idea what a:\ means, the other says
that the disk is probably not formatted. ddrescue says something similar.
Strange enough, both do give me a name of a .dbf file on the diskettes, which is 100% correct.
Somewhat a contradictio in terminis.
I was informed that other diskettes and CDs have been located that may have a connection to these.
So I'm hoping that some of them contain a backup of the old ones. Fingers crossed.
Paul