How to Recover Data from Floppy Disk with Not Formatted Error
What is floppy disk?
A floppy disk is a flexible plastic disk coated with magnetic material and covered by a protective jacket, used primarily by computers to store data magnetically. It is also called diskette. They are slower to access than hard disks and have less storage capacity, but they are much less expensive. And most importantly, unlike most hard disks, floppy disks are portable. You can remove them from a disk drive.
Currently, floppy disks are no longer commonly found on computers, but many people still use this portable storage device to save small size files. People who have used a floppy disk may usually have had the frustrating experience of losing important data at one time or another.
When I try to access a floppy disk, I get an error message: “The disk media is not recognized, it may not be formatted.” I need the data on this floppy disk urgently. Can someone help me please?
Actually, when you access a floppy disk, it is quite possible to receive one of the following error messages:
- A:\ is not accessible. The device is not ready.
- The disk in drive A is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?
- STOP: The disk media is not recognized, it may not be formatted.
Never format the floppy disk if you have important data inside. In case of the not formatting error or you mistakenly deleted some data, there are still chances to restore files from floppy disk. Nevertheless, we need to solve several problems first.
Connect to Floppy Disk without an Old Computer
Floppy disks are no longer detectable in most computers today. If you don’t have an old computer, here are two ways to connect a floppy disk to computer.
- Buy proper adapters for floppy disk. Make sure to choose the adapter exactly suitable for your floppy disk from eBay or Amazon.
- Create disk image from floppy disk. You can do it on a temporary old computer or with an adapter from others, and then import it into a data recovery software.
Create Disk Image from Floppy Disk
Why to create disk image for floppy disk? Floppy disks have been outdated, so a lot of data recovery tools stop supporting this kind of storage devices. However, a disk image can include the entire floppy disk structure, both existing and deleted files, so that some floppy disk data recovery software will detect and scan the IMG file for existing and lost data.
To create disk image from a floppy disk, we need special tools, which are usually developed ten or twenty years ago. Fortunately, some of them still work in the latest Windows 10 computers, such as Virtual Floppy Drive and WinImage. Anyway, just create a floppy disk image file in .IMG format, and then use the data recovery software mentioned in the next part to recover deleted files from floppy disk image file.
How to Recover Deleted Files from Floppy Disk Image File
What’s the idea to recover data from floppy disk with not formatted error? Just take it easy. There are still ways to get data back. Floppy Disk Data Recovery introduced by Jihosoft Studio can recover deleted files from floppy disk. This software supports unreadable or inaccessible floppy disk and restores lost files with ease. Free download floppy disk data recovery software full version to your Windows or Mac computer, and then follow the instruction below.
Tips: Do not attempt to format the floppy disk with not formatted error before you recovering lost data from it. The formatting action will make the data lost forever.
Easy Steps to Recover Data from Floppy Disk:
- Run Jihosoft File Recovery on your computer and choose Recover File.
- On the next screen, click Load Image. On the pop-up window, locate and open the IMG file.
- Select the floppy disk image from the Removable Disk list, then click Scan Now.
- Preview the found files and click Recover button.
Now you should get back files from floppy disk. The file recovery software can also recover files from SD card, USB stick, hard drive and computer internal disks. With the Create Image feature, you can also make a full image backup for your removable disks, and then restore data from the .IMG file in the future.
Bottom Line
Floppy disk has become a thing of the past, but many people still need to extract or retrieve data from floppy disk. That’s why we update this tutorial. As long as you have an IMG file for the floppy disk, the data recovery software will help you restore all files from it.