General Question

XOIIO's avatar

Get windows 7 to read floppies made on windows 98?

Asked by XOIIO (18328points) June 12th, 2010 from iPhone

It keeps asking me to format it when there are files on it. Is there a way to get it to read them? I really need to be able to do this,

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

8 Answers

the100thmonkey's avatar

Have you tried mounting the floppy from a Linux LiveCD?

How old are the floppies?

XOIIO's avatar

I don’t want to install a partition on my pc right now. They are pretty old floppies.

mrentropy's avatar

@XOIIO Unless they did something radically stupid, Win 7 should be able to read Window 98 discs just fine, since they’re formatted in FAT or FAT32. Are you sure the disk you’re trying to use is still good?

jaytkay's avatar

There’s nothing special about an old floppy. Either the floppies are bad or the floppy drive is bad.

Both are common.

I would try another PC and/or a Live CD.

A live CD boots up and runs from the CD drive, nothing is installed on your hard drive, no partition is necessary.

XOIIO's avatar

I’m using a plug and play floppy drive, I’ll try copying the files into the newly formatted disc.

XOIIO's avatar

Hmm turns out they were written on a mac, so duh they won’t work LOL

the100thmonkey's avatar

@XOIIO – I wasn’t suggesting that you install Linux, hence the “LiveCD” bit.

I think a Linux distribution might well read them, actually.

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