Yesturday i tried to use a floppy disk on my home computer with a Word document that was typed on my office computer and a Word document that was typed on home computer.I needed to open the document that was typed at my house and when I attemped to open the file an error came up saying that the disk is not formated. This had happened before on a different disk and I have tried to format it but it still didn't work. So I just decided to bring the disk back to work today and save the document onto my office computer and finish the job there. It will not let me save the document onto the computer and when I open the document in Word today nearly half of the document were strange symbols.

Why will the disk sometimes work on my computer and not always?

Also how can I make the weird symbols change back into the words I previously typed?

Please help me:( . Thanks a bunch

It sounds like you have a bad floppy disk. Floppy disks are considered as pretty much disposable these days, so their quality has come down quite a bit. A new floppy disk will start showing errors only after a few weeks of usage - completely unlike 80's floppies that endured years upon years of use (and abuse).

You need a new floppy disk - they are dirt cheap these days. Regarding the fuzzy text, I'm afraid that I have bad news. Unless, of course, you have a backup copy somewhere. If that's not the case, I guess you have some serious typing to do.

Try BadCopy Pro (http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/) - its surprising how this software can sometimes be successful. The other thing to try is to run scandisk on the floppy - though this is best left till last since it will re-write areas of the disk depending on how badly corrupted it is and whether there is sufficient room on the diskette after reorganising things. It can be successful OR make the situation even worse.

You would have more of a chance if the stuff was in straight text format (even by just accessing the floppy with a hex editor and reading the text that way) but the corruption of a word doc is more complicated.

PS consider getting yourself a pen drive; a small one (32-64MB) would only be the price of a couple of boxes of floppies, be easily carried around, allow fast transfers of data and be virtually indestructable.

;)

Thanks. My daughter today at the same problem. Bad floppy. Bad news is she lost a lot of information she didn't keep on her hard drive.

We just got her a flash drive too!