Does floppy disk recovery still exist? And if it does who in this world is still using it?

How many calls are data recovery companies and IT professionals receiving for floppy disk recovery? I imagine few, if any. If I took a survey of people twenty-five years old and younger, I wonder what percentage would even know what a floppy is, much less how the floppy disk recovery process works. Computer manufactures have also booted the floppy drive as the standard years ago, replacing it with CD and CD/DVD drives. So, are there really people out there still storing data on such obsolete unreliable technology?

How is floppy disk recovery still alive and kicking?

My answer: Habits die hard. The 'die-hards' still store data on floppies and run floppy-based programs, so floppy disk recovery remains in demand; the purists and the under-world people still think this technology is cool. Go into any time-tested technician's lab (it's the bedroom if he or she is single; the garage if married); you will see more floppies than CDs. I am not just talking about basic boot diskettes to access failing systems. We are talking about true collector's items like Asteroids, Lotus 1-2-3, and PC-DOS 1.0. If you are one of the oldies, like me, I am sure you are going, 'yeh, that's right', and naming a few more rare programs and floppy disk recovery utilities proudly displayed below your coffee mug, on top of your Tandy TRS-80, and next to your Atari that you still play. 'I spy' an eight-track player in the room, too.

Which floppy disk recovery programs are the best?

I can see the emails coming from the oldies: 'Lost and Found.' The younger crowd has already opened their browser, have cut and paste the name, and are now searching. To save you guys time, it only recovers FAT and is old technology. But, in the day, this floppy disk recovery utility was the 'cat's meow', the best of the recovery hard disk utility in the trade. And it cost an arm, a leg, and a left you know what. Time has evolved and so has floppy disk recovery software.

What you've been waiting for

Has your floppy suddenly flopped out in need of floppy disk recovery software? What message has popped up, 'Error reading sector'? This means there is a physical problem, which requires a floppy disk recovery utility that bypasses the O/S, giving you direct port access to the floppy. If something like, 'Drive A: disk not formatted', or 'Drive A: not accessible', is starring you in the face, there is probably corruption and most tools that recognize floppies should work. Floppy disk recovery is simple, straight-forward, and is over in about the time it takes to import a Lotus1-2-3 spreadsheet into Harvard Graphics. Specific solutions and there reviews can be found in the Software section.

Just for the fun of it...

Because I need to clean up all these floppy disk recovery utilities that are piled up and out-dated, I have searched the Internet for creative uses of old floppies. You have got to be joking, a carrying case? Not in this lifetime. Oh, a refrigerator magnet. Now I can deal with that - to hang up my children's art work. And for the finale, the Creme de la Creme, the coolest hardware conversion business on the planet: Creating a custom turntable, reusing the floppy drive to 'motor' it. If you have any ideas that trump these uses for dusty, old floppy disk recovery diskettes or floppy drives, I would enjoy hearing about them from you. Nanu Nanu!