Since I haven't owned a computer with a floppy drive in it for many years, I went in search of an external floppy drive that would be able to read both 720K and 1.44MB disks. Most of my floppy disks were 720K or 1.44MB disks for the PC, with a handful of 800K Mac formatted disks. The last time I had done an archive was back in the late 90s, so it was a good idea to go through this process while there was still the necessary hardware available to back up these old relics of digital storage.

Last year, I took on the arduous task of archiving around 200 old floppy disks. instead of real-time helical scanning, the videotape could be duplicated linearly at high speed).Archiving Mac Floppies 7th May 2018 | Tutorial

The closest to 'magnetic printing' I'm aware of was the process Sony developed to duplicate Betamax tapes (i.e. Hence the floppy media can physically wear out. Unlike hard drives which have 'flying heads', the read/write heads on floppy drives actually touches the media during normal operation. The tracks on 8', 5.25' and 3.5' floppies are all written magnetically by polarizing ferrite particles. However I recall from the old days that floppies had tracks “printed” on them and a magnet could mess that up, preventing them from being used. The issue is then a lack of ferrite material to polarize and generate current in the read head. worn out tracks) then erasure won't help. Maybe, if the damage is due to magnetic corruption.īut rather than use a magnet, a 'bulk eraser' (an electromagnet that emits a strong alternating magnetic field) should be used.īut if the floppy has actual surface damage (e.g.

Formatting floppy disk mac