How to use your diskettes?

Many people face the same problem when they try to open a floppy disk. One of the situations that you and I don't want to see is this message:

or

If the disk only containing some photos, mp3, games.... then you just format it and that all.
But what happen it contains the project that you need to hand up, or your thesis.
I hope this would happen to you.

So I decided to share my experience with you all how to take care your floppy disk, so that it wouldn't betray you.

• Don't format you floppy disk
  Yes, don't always format your floppy disk.
  When people finish copy files into their hard disk, they like to format it.
  I don't know how long their floppy disks can last, but mine can last around 3 year, without format it frequently. I only format it when problem occurs.
  Many people misunderstand that format their floppy disks can eliminate bad sector.
  They only right 50%.

  Floppy disk is a plate of magnetic material that you can use electromagnetic to write signals on it and read from it. Some cheap floppy disk doesn't have average distribute of magnetic material on it, so some parts can't hold data long. So sometime these parts will lose it magnetic property and you will have bad sector. So when you format these floppy disks, it will recover it but it will get back it bad sector very soon.

  The correct way to handle bad sector is:

  1. Format the disk.
  2. Copy a file onto it. You can use FileSplitter to split a file and copy a file onto the disk so that the file can cover almost the whole disk.
  3. Then open Windows ScanDisk or Norton Disk Doctor, and scan that diskette. Must perform surface test.
  4. If the result say that no bad sector, then you can try to use the floppy disk for few time and perform the surface test again. From my experience, the disk will get it bad sector very soon.
  5. If the test tells you that it can't read from some parts, then tell them to mark it as bad sector. At then end of the scan you will know how much bad sector you have. If you found that the system don't allow you to repair the problem, then the bad sector is larger than 7 KB. Try to copy a smaller file (approx. 1.4 MB) into that disk again, and re-perform the test.
  6. Once you know how much bad sector you have, try to mark the size on you diskette, and remember don't try to format it, it wouldn't help.
     

• Don't directly read or write from the diskettes
  I'm not sure whether people are lazy to copy their file into the hard disk or they don't know how to do it.
  Do you know that it can easily damage you floppy disk? And this is what happen when you use Winzip to save a large file.
  I have saw many times that peoples can't open their file on the floppy disk. When I ask them whether or not they directly save file onto the diskette. The answer is Yes, 100%.
  Try to do any thing on hard disk and copy it into the diskettes when finish. You can notes that doing work direct on hard disk is much more faster, and you can have a backup on it. Especially, Word and Excel, you will save lots of time.
  

• Change the EXE to BMP before copy to floppy disks
  Try to change the extension EXE to BMP before copy to diskettes. You need more time to open a diskette contains EXE file rather than other types because the system will try to read the whole EXE file to find the icon that belong to that file. You can use DOS if you don't want the system to read your EXE file.
  It also prevents you from being infect by virus, since the system doesn't read it.
  

I think these are few rule of thumb that can help you to handle your floppy disk. If you have other that these, you can email to me, and I can post it here for sharing. Or if you disagree with me, you are also welcome to point it out.

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