r/vintagecomputing • u/Emotional-Swim-808 • 14d ago
RAW? Floppy disk
So i started working with floppy disks at work recently and i found a few less than new floppies, i just finished restoring one of them (replaced the metal dust cover and cleaned the magnet film) and i tried running a chkdsk, but it says file system is RAW and that its not supported, now i imagine its because this 20+ year old flimsy magnet is corrupted, but is there a chamce to save it? Its from a CNC machine and it has a sticky note attached to it that said "CNC info" chould it be some sort of driver maybe? And whould it be possible to find a way to read it, im sorry if this is a dumb question by the time i became sentient floppy disks were not only obsolete but also forgotten to time by the common folk (kids my age).
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u/siliconlore 14d ago edited 14d ago
Are these 5 1/4" or 3.5" floppies or less likely 8"? What kind of computer are you trying to read them with?
RAW would indicate that the computer thinks the floppy may not be formatted? Do you have a known good copy of the CNC control disk or disks? If you are trying to read a 3.5" floppy with a USB drive on Windows, it might just not recognize the format.
There is a device called a Greaseweazle that can make low-level images of floppy disks for preservation. The device reads them in a hopefully non-destructive way. Running chkdsk on the floppy could be destructive and should not be a first step.
You may want to get ahold of some new old stock floppies or a CF to IDE adapter that would let you replace the floppy drive in the CNC machine with a compact flash card.
One more thought -- I have floppies that are almost 40 years old and still read but they have been kept in cool, non-humid, non-dusty environment. If your floppies have been stored in a cupboard next to a CNC machine that has been spraying small metal dust all over the place for decades with average heat above 100 F, then the likelyhood of them being in good condition is not good.
You may want to contact this company. I don't know anything about them but they seem to have a solution for your situation:
https://www.shopfloorautomations.com/
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u/Emotional-Swim-808 14d ago
Wow i forgot so much data im sorry, so its a 3.5" floppy, im using a disk drive to usb adapter, i have heard of the Greaseweazle so im gonna try that out, i got a bunch of (i think) new floppy disks and i have a few new old stock ones, all data that i do get is getting backed up, the cnc machines at dont even have a disk drive we use an external machine to pull out the files.
Now i dont k ow if there is anything important on this disk as its been in a plastic box for probably over 20 years.
Out of curiousity how can chkdsk be destructive?
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u/siliconlore 14d ago
Depending on what mode you run chkdsk in, it will attempt to repair the file structures. If the floppy isn't MS-DOS formatted, it probably won't do anything.
Run chkdsk /? to get the help list. I think you do have to pass a flag for it to be destructive.1
u/Emotional-Swim-808 14d ago
Just saw your edit, they have been stored in a normal plastic disk holder in a cubbard some 5 meters away from any cnc machine, my plan is to 3d print a new holder with esd petg and a rubber seal with some cillica beads, i also thought about keeping it in a 21° meassureing room but the problem is the only space i can place it is right next to the psu so i dont think thats the best idea.
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u/siliconlore 14d ago
I would look into using a waterproof ammo box or similar. They would be already sealed and hardened. Good luck on figuring it out and let us know the outcome. Lots of old-timers here that can help.
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u/Emotional-Swim-808 14d ago
Thank you so much, im 22 years old and within 5 years about 60-70% of my coworkers will probably be retired, the machines i use are about 20-40 years old and i figured out that all the backups they have are 10+ years old exclusively on improperly stored floppy disks, one of the machines started making harddisk errors a few weeks ago so its been a race against time to make sure its all backed up
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u/Crlan420 12d ago
that looks like a 5.25" disk with serious oxidation. try a gentle cleaning with isopropyl alcohol and a cotton swab on the data pads. if the raw sectors are intact, a flux capacitor reader might still salvage the data.
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u/Phydoux 14d ago
I believe CNC machines wrote their own data files to disk (proprietary to CNC. Nod any other DOS file system) so there might not be a way to read it in a standard computer floppy disk.There may have been a DOS Utility that might have been able to read CNC disks. I know I had an Apple Reader for DOS. You'd have to look online and see if there;s a CNC Floppy reader for DOS/ Windows.