Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni

Subject: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: izzy
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 06:01 PM

It's me and my floppy woes again...

I'm working on a paper for university (due tomorrow). I saved it on floppy at home and did some extra work on it at university today. I opened and saved it normally --I changed the title of the paper but not of the file. Now when I try to open it at home Word tells me that the path name is not valid and that the file may be password-protected or have a / or a \ in the file name. Could the computer at school have saved it with a password or a different file name, and how can I find out? The "properties" option in the dropdown box tells me nothing. Is there any way of getting rid of the password and accessing my file in time to hand the paper in tomorrow? It also makes a hell of a racket trying to open the file. I've searched microsoft for advice and I can't find any.

Thanks,

Isabel

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 06:06 PM

Go into 'My Computer' select the floppy, and ask for 'All files'

Simple as that.

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 06:07 PM

Use Windows Explorer to copy the file off the flobby to your HD... (Put it on your desk-top to make things easier...

If Windows Exporer can't find it, your floppy is dead...

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: izzy
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 06:18 PM

I tried to copy it and this message came up: Cannot copy. Cannot read from the source file or disk.

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 06:36 PM

Then your floppy is f**ked. Sorry

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:02 PM

Then how is it I can open another file I have saved on this floppy, of the same type (another essay which I also worked on at school) and not this one? It's obviously not the floppy itself, but the file.

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:04 PM

Try shutting the file and the application before you try to copy it

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:06 PM

Yup... yer floppy is dead...

Sorry to bear bad news...

It was likely a dirty, filthy read/write head at the university put a HUGE scratch across your floppy at some point... public computers are HORRID for stuff like that... I believe there's a ceaning 'disk' you can get (Sorta like a head cleaner for a cassette tape player, or a laster cleaner for a CD Player) that you should use before you put your precious floppy into ANY public computer... A chum of mine used to carry one with him EVERYWHERE! LOL

Also maybe think about investing in any one of the many many formats of "SmartMedia" cards or sticks that are available today... The ones that connect via the USB port seem to me to be the most universal... No moving parts means yer less likely to have problems...

Again, I know, none of this helps you with your current problem, but for the future an ounce of prevention eh...

You DID keep a back-up of the file before you made your last changes right? (Fingers crossed for your sake)

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:14 PM

The floppy WAS the backup --I have a former version of the paper printed off, but in trying to copy the file on the floppy the original file, saved on my computer, got replaced, i.e. wiped out.
I suppose there's no way I could recover THAT?? Knowing computers, there probably isn't.

Thanks for the tip about the drive. I had no idea that public computers were so dangerous. Maybe the best idea is to try to do all my work at home.

I suppose I'll be up until midnight retyping the thing and hoping I can remember my flashes of inspiration.

I am SO sick of floppies!!

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:15 PM

And if as we cross posted, you can read other stuff off that floppy... get that stuff OFF there while you can....

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:16 PM

Sorry for the double post... but also... if you are going to continue to work in floppies... make sure you have at least 3 copies of everything at all times... More if you have the floppies to do it...

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:18 PM

" I am SO sick of floppies!!"

This is one reason why -NO ONE- uses 'em any more...

Best of luck to ya eh!

I'll put the coffee on for ya...

:-)

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:21 PM

Floppies will easily develop "dead" areas from which files cannot be read, while other files on other parts of the same disk will be uncompromised. If you run it through Scandisk those areas will be identified. It won't help you to recover the file, though. For future reference, never work on floppies. Use them only for moving files of which you hold copies on your hard drive, and then only if there is no alternative.

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From:
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:29 PM

Even then, IF possible, instead of putting the file on Floppy, is it possible to send the file back and forth via e-mail?

Is it possible the computer at the university has a copy of the file? Even in its Temp folder?

Good luck. Sorry about the floppy problems.

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:40 PM

The Temp Folder idea is well worth caling the uni about!

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: GUEST,Lyle
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:45 PM

Do you have a file recovery program? There are several around. Norton is probably best known, Tech Tools is good, there are several others. Try one of those before you give up; it may be your file is fine and your pathway has problems - that can be easily fixed. I seriously doubt your disk is totally shot if you can get other files. Recovery of one sort or another works in a lot of cases like yours. If you can't recover it yourself, take it to the University Computer Center and have them work on it. Take along a blank disk and when they recover the old file, have them copy it to the blank disk.

Best of luck!

Lyle

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 08:49 PM

I see a number of helpful posts since my response was interrupted by screaming children wanting to be fed; but I'll offer a comment or two despite the repetition.

1. If your machine cannot read from the source (A:\) drive, you cannot recover your file(s) on your machine.

1.a. There is the somewhat remote possibility that you might be able to return to the machine where the file was last saved and open it there.
1.b. There is the very remote possibility that removing and reinserting the floppy in your machine a few times might get a read; but this is quite unlikely.
1.c. In light of some of the other confusions, it's possible that your Word program thinks that the "source" is somewhere other than the floppy drive where the file is located.

In ancient times, when virtually everything was done on floppy disks of various description, it was fairly common to find that disks formatted on one machine could not be written to reliably on another machine. Most machines would read from disks formatted and written elsewhere, but common practice was (where the problem was known) to always re-format the disk in the machine on which you write the file or changes to it. This problem is virtually unknown with "modern" machines, but a high-use (i.e. school) machine could be suffering from tracking problems of the sort that could cause the problem to re-surface. (Usually, the machine that wrote the "mistracked" file should be able to read it.)

2. If you somehow used the Office password protection system and attached a password to the file, and you do not know the password, then the file cannot be recovered by any practically available means. The password encryption used by Office programs is "strong," and it's unlikely you'd live long enough to break it. Microsoft states quite clearly that they are unable to assist in such cases. (This is one of the few cases where even throwing massive amounts of "assistance" money at them won't help.)

2.a. Attaching Office password protection requires rather deliberate action, and it's unlikely that you did this by accident.
2.b. Your school system quite probably gives you a "user share" that may apply "privilege identifiers" to files that you work on there. It is possible that something crept in there that would look like an encryption tag on your file; but it's impossible to deal with that without knowing a whole lot more about the school system and operating protocols used there.
2.c. Your school system may be equipped to write a variety of floppy disk formats, and/or a variety of import/export files to be taken back to users' own Mac or DOS, perhaps even LINUX, machines, so that users with a variety of systems on their own machines can use the shared ones at the school. You may have accidentally saved your file in a "foreign" file type. The file should be recoverable on the machine that wrote it, if that's what happened; although that's not much help to you immediately.

If you must get your project in by tomorrow, your best hope is probably to open the last best copy you have, and apply your memory and notes to reconstructing what you've done since it was saved. My experience has been that lost work can usually be "re-produced" in about 1/3 the time that it took to do it the first time – and sometimes even comes out better.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 09:10 PM

Or use the excuse "The DogGP.720 virus ate my homework".

It might even be true.

Sorry about your floppy. A bitter learning experience. We all forget to backup sufficiently and sometimes it bites us in the ass.

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: izzy
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 09:13 PM

Thanks very much for everything, everyone. I have downloaded God knows how many file recovery programmes and they all say that there are "blocks" to opening that particular file. This, although I don't know much about it, would seem to fit with Clinton's hypothesis re the scratch. One programme, Virtual Labs, seems confident of saving the files to my computer but wants a hundred dollars first! :[] I went up to uni tonight with the intention of opening (or trying to) the file on the computer I was working on, but another student was working there and I couldn't very well ask her to clear out (I did, however, warn her not to save her file in the floppy drive!!)

Currently retyping my paper. It's not as good as it was the first time, but I suppose it will do.

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: izzy
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 09:48 PM

Hallelujah!! One of the search and recovery tools that I downloaded in response to Lyle's suggestion worked! I have recovered the file from my floppy and saved to my hard drive, am saving it to another floppy, and will be able to get it done at home tonight and still go to bed before 2 in the morning. Thanks so much to everybody, I had absolutely no hope of getting it back together. (I did waste 2 hours typing out the first draft again, but oh well, that's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.)

Cheers and drinks all round,

Isabel

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Amos
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 09:59 PM

I dunno if your lab machines have USB ports, but if they do you can buy a small pocket disk device that will store as much as hundreds of floppies and plugs directly into the USB port. Highly recommended.

A

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 10:18 PM

What was it that worked, and did it tell you anything about the cause of the original problem? We all need to know about such things, just in case!

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: izzy
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 10:19 PM

Yes, they do. I've decided to get one. Floppies drive me mad (they warp, they melt, they become corrupted and have to be reformatted, they're flimsy.) Grr!

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: izzy
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 10:25 PM

A programme called Search and Recover (downloadable from cnet.com). It didn't say what was wrong, but it did save the file as a read-only file so I could copy and paste into my wordprocessor. It only allows 3 recoveries, but it works!

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 10:26 PM

"am saving it to another floppy,"

Have you not read ANYTHING in this thread????

:-)

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: izzy
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 10:55 PM

As well as to my hard drive. Actually the paper is now done and printed off and I can sleep! Hurrah!

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 12:21 AM

There are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of free e-mail servers.

When writing "important" (to you at least) documents for class-type assignments ALWAYS backup the HD and 3.5 with a triplicate copy to three different e-mail systems. You can then bring it up, world-wide, on virtually any Mac or PC.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

ANSI good - Bill Gates bad - a term paper is a terrible waste to thing.

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From:
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 01:07 AM

Congratulations, Isabel. Glad you recovered it.

However, as John In Kansas said, re-writing it will usually be shorter and come out better.

I've experienced what John said. It does come out better, so you could have treated it as yet another draft.

Still, the aggravation you experienced is NOT one I'd care to inflict on anyone, enemies included.

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: GUEST,Peter from Essex
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 02:16 AM

Pen drives are far more reliable than floppies but certainly not 100 percent.

For web based backup try setting up an invitiation only Yahoo or MSN group and use it for web based back up. MSN only gives 3Meg on the free service but more if you combine it with the paid for Hotmail add ons, Yahoo is a bit more generous.

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 03:50 AM

Glad to hear that the immediate crisis is resolved.

Although we seem to have reached a consensus that floppies are less reliable than some other media, it should NOT be a significant problem to "sneaker net" a file or two between two machines, using floppies. With reasonable "operating practices," any loss of data associated with such use should be, at most, an inconvenience; but should never be a disaster.

One rule to follow would be to always leave your "last best version" on the machine where you made it, at least until you confirm that it's been safely transported to the other machine. If you can't leave it on the university hard drive, at least make a second floppy and keep it in "the other pocket."

Another ancient practice is to always close the file and open it from the floppy before you leave the machine where you wrote it.

A MANDATORY rule is "keep your floppies clean." If possible, get one of those little box cases. If that's not convenient, at least get a clean, small (manila?) envelope to use to transport them, or use a food grade "baggie." Nothing kills them faster than a few "Cheeto's" crumbs (except maybe refrigerator magnets).

Don't EVER lay a floppy on top of your monitor, or on anything that hums, growls, squeaks, or otherwise appears to have "working parts" inside.

Of course you will complain to your university sysadmin or other support techies about that "defective" floppy drive?

You WILL figure out how to get these things done, although you may want to filter out some of our helpful hints. We can be a pretty "eager" crowd here.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 02:56 PM

Isabel:

Really happy you got your file back. I have recovered literally hundreds of files for my students (free of charge, of course) so I'll give anyone some free advice. For less than $50.00 you can buy software that will recover almost anything. I've even recovered a disk (well, about 80%) that went through a fire that destroyed the house! And don't be afraid to use disks! They are remarkably cheap, so save two of them (Three if it is a really long project) then store them in separate places.

There is an alternative. Mac users really have it made, because using .mac you can use THEIR storage on line and THEY are responsible for it, and it can be pulled up on any computer anywhere. There are other firms that will do the same thing, but they usually cost quite a bit. How do they do it? same way as suggested above - multiple disks. Lets say that you have a 2% chance of a disk going bad. See how the odds are MUCH lower with two disks, and almost non existance with three?

Now I hope you get an A+ on the project!!!

Lyle

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: izzy
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 04:08 PM

Thanks, Lyle. I will continue to buy floppies and back up numerous copies, but I think I will also invest in a removable drive for REALLY important files. I really appreciate all the help and support.

Cheers,

Isabel

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 04:28 PM

I want a data-minidisc drive for my backups...

:-)

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From:
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 04:39 PM

So do I, Clinton!

Subject: RE: Tech: Opening a file I saved on floppy at uni
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 04:46 PM

Have you seen the PRICES though????

Frigg'n OUCH!!!!!!!