I would like to see approaches to recovering data from fragile disks by placing the inner disk on a flat surface and using some kind of imaging technology to measure the magnetic fields - perhaps an electron microscope could do the job at low enough field strengths?
Using this I imagine it might be possible to not only read the disk data, but perhaps even previous versions of data that has been overwritten.
Preserving old original floppy disks may be useful, for several reasons, but I myself got rid of all my floppy disks many years ago when USB sticks became viable; even ages ago already, e. g. using CDs and DVDs getting rid of floppy disks - so actually those USB devices killed my use case for floppy disks, CDs and DVDs. I still like DVDs but having USB sticks is simply more convenient in the long run.
When I moved out from my parents I took a box with aprox 100 floppies. I was pleasently surprised when only 2 were unreadeable all others were ok.
The other box with CDs had a much higher "fault rate". Go figure.
CDs turned out to be terrible for long term storage, because the actual bits are pits in the very thin aluminum layer that's bonded to one side of the transparent polycarbonate disk. The back side of that aluminum often had nothing but a painted label to protect it.
DVD otoh, seems much more durable. The storage layer is sandwiched between two decent thicknesses of poly. But who knows, only time will tell.
What it actually takes is taking the floppy disc out, cleaning any mold on it, putting it back in the case, and then using greaseweazle to image the magnetic flux of the disc.
Cyclomethicone is getting hard to get depending on your jurisdiction. I think it's shelf-stable though, so if you think this might be something you want to do in the future, maybe get some now.
(But also, the disks aren't getting any younger. Do it now.)
All my childhood Apple II 5 1/4" floppies have been mirrored, so I can visit those files in an emulator any time I want. But I'll miss the crazy amount of control the system had over the physical disk drive. Nibble counting, half tracks, quarter tracks, spiral tracks, tracks 35+, weak bits... it was like an adventure game built directly into the machine.
So the article mentions that her favorite disk type is the 3 inch amstrad disk, so I google searched for that and clicked the first image that comes up and it's an article written by the person the first article is about.
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 28.8 ms ] threadUsing this I imagine it might be possible to not only read the disk data, but perhaps even previous versions of data that has been overwritten.
Somewhere in my mother's house, there still is (hopefully) a floppy disk from 2006-2007 with my teenage self's diary. I wish it is preserved
DVD otoh, seems much more durable. The storage layer is sandwiched between two decent thicknesses of poly. But who knows, only time will tell.
(But also, the disks aren't getting any younger. Do it now.)
https://digitalpreservation-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/3-inch-treasu...