PC help: Disappearing pictures

Recover files from old floppy disks

Q I have photos saved on about 10 old floppy disks, but my floppy disk drive won’t read them. I presume it is probably because they are several years old and they are out of date.

Is it possible for me to get the photos off the disks and onto my new computer’s hard disk so that I can then put them onto a CD?
Mike Cannar

A As long as the floppy disks were created or saved using a PC (running any version of Windows or MS-Dos), you should be able to read the files now. However, floppy disks are extremely unreliable, which is why we recommend USB flash drives or CDs as a safer storage medium.

If you are receiving read errors or something similar when you insert the disks, or the computer says they’re not formatted, it’s likely that the disks are corrupt. You can try a recovery program such as Badcopy which will go through and try to recover the data, copying it to your computer’s hard disk – it’s a paid-for program, but you can try it on the defective disks for free.

If, on the other hand, the computer can see the files on the disks, it’s a format problem, by which we mean that the old photos are saved in a form that the new computer doesn’t understand. In that case, copy the files to your hard disk by dragging and dropping them to a new folder in your My Documents folder. Then you’ll need to remember the name of the program with which they were saved – without knowing the file extensions, we can’t be more specific.

You can try opening them in the Gimp or Paint.net, or a program such as Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro.