Need some help with floppys

[bentomo]

My parents gave me 9 floppy discs all labeled rescue disk and the number disk. I've never seen any floppys like this but they say that they have files backed up on it.

Anyway the last time I tried to open the files it was some kind of unknown file type and it just had 000 as the file extension. I was wondering how I could figure out how to get the files.

Plus to add to the frustration everytime I put it in the floppy reader it says "The disk in drive :/B is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?"

I HATE THIS MESSAGE!!!!!!!1 :evil3: :evil3: :evil3: :evil3: :evil3: :evil3:

Now I can't even get into the floppy disk. I haven't tried booting from it yet but I'll try that next.

So anyone know what a rescue disk is?

 

[J.D]

Don't call me retarded, but are the files meant for Windows and not a Mac?

 

[bentomo]

Actually I tried using winrar to open it or do anything with it but now luck. I was thinking that they were the boot discs for an os, but I wasn't sure if it was made with windows or some software. I did try to boot them into a pc to load the os but no luck.

 

[XCVG]

Why does it matter? What's on them is probably completely irrelevant nowadays anyway.

 

[Zero]

Why does it matter? What's on them is probably completely irrelevant nowadays anyway.

Yea, I agree. If they are indeed rescue disks for an anti-virus program I doubt they'd be of any use to you or have any relevant information on them.

 

[Jourdy288]

Shoot, I remember those! I actually made a couple for my Win98 PC! They held configuration settings, so if your computer crashed, the last working configuration would be booted. It's like saving a blueprint of your cars engine, and then taking it apart and building it into something else, so if it doesn't work, you could switch back to the last configuration that worked (i.e. an engine will never make a good paper aeroplane AFAIK)

 

[bentomo]

It's my parents office documents actually, some of them are actually important. But still, that doesn't matter anymore. They don't even work anymore. Now my mom has to retype all of the documents.


Since I told them this they want to regularly backup the files onto a hard drive where the files will actually be reachable. So I was wondering how I would go about getting a network storage device to back everything up. Like a 1TB network hdd. I've never actually used one before so I wouldn't know how to get one to work.


Actually I'm just going to get a 1TB hard drive and back it up manually. When my parents originally backup the computers onto floppys they thought that the floppys would last them a long time. Does anyone know how to clone a hard drive? Not make an image of it, so make it so that if you switch the hard drive with the cloned one it would work exactly the same way. Like the same computer. I don't think just dragging everything into the hard drive to the clone really works.

 

[PalmerTech]

Thanks to the wonders of modern OS authentication and anti-piracy efforts, you can not do that.

You should just back up, then you can recover your documents if you need to, the OS is not that important.

 

[bentomo]

Guess that means that I have to reinstall all of the applications then too. Well at least the hard drive shouldn't fail THAT often.

 

[XCVG]

If your HDD fails that often, then you have issues.

 

[bentomo]

If your HDD fails that often, then you have issues.

But do you have any idea how good hdd's work as hammers?!?!?

 

[Aguiluz]

When I was browsing Modretro as a guest, I saw the file extension "000" and my mind immediately thought of "DRVSPACE.000" Boy, I remember years ago when I had 50 floppies on my desk with that file on it. Used that file all the time.


Anyway, what program created this 000 file is DriveSpace. I used this on a Windows 98. It is a full-disk compression program that "compressed" the contents of the floppy as hard as it can. Then to use it, you mount the 000 file and it gets recognized with all the files. Data is compressed and decompressed on the fly and then it *cough* guesstimates the compression ratios of the files you put in. It may say 35MB of free space on the floppy (!!) but put a 2MB zip file that can't be compressed and watch as the estimated free space shrinks and complains it's full. Put in TXT files, however, and I held 2.5MB of text in a single floppy. Handy, no?

You'll have to find a 98 machine that has drivespace. Then you can open it from there. Once opened, get the files. Fast. A single bad sector on the floppy renders the 000 file useless.