You may not want to admit it, but you have some. They’re tucked away in the back of your desk drawer or in a box in the closet. Perhaps you don’t want to admit it because they are an indicator of your age. No, they’re not 8-track tapes, LPs, cassettes or monster cell phones from a decade ago. Yes, they’re floppy disks. Remember those delightful, rainbow-coloured storage devices?
But, can you remember the files saved on them? Care to guess what the former vice-president had on their floppy which was tossed into a box when the new VP arrived? What about the HR manager? Salaries? Performance reviews? Businesses and individuals may stumble upon these “jewels”. Why jewels? Because in today’s network-enabled world, they are becoming rare and the data they hold may be priceless.
Floppy disks or diskettes were once the means to back-up files on your computer. However, with the evolution of storage media, people are backing up their files to external hard drives or USB flash drives. Innovation has led to increased storage capacity. A one terabyte hard drive has the storage capacity of approximately one million 1.44 MB diskettes that you would have used back in the 80’s.
So what do you do when you find these disks flopping around in that box or desk drawer? Do you toss them out along with the data contained on them?
If your computer does not come with a floppy drive and you want to ‘archive’ the data contained on your floppies, invest in an external floppy drive reader. Simply plug the reader into one of your computer’s USB ports. You can then read your floppies and copy the files to your hard drive, CD, or memory key.
You may, however, find that your floppies are damaged and not readable. Just like the hard drives of today, floppies are fragile and sensitive to dust and other foreign matter. So, if the data is sentimental or historic business files, consider sending your floppy diskette(s) to a reliable data recovery firm which can rescue or simply convert the data to CD or DVD for future access.
Bill Margeson is president of CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc. CBL can be found at www.cbltech.ca.
2600 John Street, Unit 207, Markham, ON L3R 3W3 T: 905.475.5222 F: 905.475.6369
