My uncle swore by floppy disks for data backups until 2018

My uncle Ed used to say floppy disks were indestructible and perfect for backing up his tax returns. He had a box of 30 disks from the late 90s with his whole life on them. Last year I tried to read one for him and every single disk was corrupted or unreadable. The magnetic coating flaked off inside the drive and ruined it too. Cost me $60 to replace my USB floppy drive after that. Has anyone else run into old disks that just crumble when you try to use them?

2 comments

2 Comments

abby83624d ago

Stumbled into this exact mess helping my dad clean out his office last month. Found a stack of 5.25 inch floppies from the 80s, thought hey maybe some old photos on there. Popped one in my old drive and it literally shed brown dust everywhere, had to blow out the drive with compressed air. The plastic sleeves were all warped too, like the humidity got to them over the years. That magnetic coating just turns to powder after a couple decades, doesn't matter how careful you were back then. I started telling everyone to just toss their old floppies and move on, not worth the hassle or the drive.

hollym1224d ago

Omg same thing happened to me with a box of old Zip disks I found. I'd just say take em to a local shop that does data recovery if you really need something off em, otherwise not worth the dust storm.