Floppy Disks From Hell
Apr. 10th, 2004 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
orikesThe last time I tried to use my computer’s floppy drive, it stuck it’s tongue out at me and refused to work. So, when the Aether Reunion happened, I despaired of getting to read the logs I had stashed on floppy from way back when. Today, though, just for a whim of inspiration (and trying to combat boredom), I dug out the disks to give them a try.
The good news is that my floppy drive is working again. I need to use a pair of tweezers to get the floppies back out again, but it’s reading them just fine and dandy.
The bad news is that floppy disks don’t really hold up well over five years. It seems like for every file I’m able to successfully get off, another is giving me fits. Bad sector, cannot read, so on and so forth.
So, I’m currently go through each disk slowly and trying to extract the files. Once I get all the files I can possibly get, I try and repair the disk. I haven’t gotten much farther than that because it’s taking a looooong time to do that.
I keep reminding myself that this isn’t nearly as bad as when I lost everything. I was MU*ing via a 286 black and white laptop on dial up and doing everything via TinyFugue for about a year and a half. On the account, I had a ton of logs saved from all my early MU*ing experience: Pern, Dragonfire, Indy by Night. It was a pretty big selection of my scenes, and a good example of how my ability to RP had actually improved.
I should have realized something was wrong when the ISP didn’t really send me any bills. Being young and stupid (as opposed to being not young but still stupid), I just smiled at my good fortune and went on MU*ing like nothing was wrong. Eventually, though, that ISP’s lack of good accounting caught up with them and they went under. From a user’s perspective, they just one day shut down. I lost -everything-.
I was able to get a small handful of logs from people I used to play with, but it was a very small amount compared to what I had. Ah well. It’s probably better that I don’t have a digital attic that looks like a virtual fire hazard anyway.
The good news is that my floppy drive is working again. I need to use a pair of tweezers to get the floppies back out again, but it’s reading them just fine and dandy.
The bad news is that floppy disks don’t really hold up well over five years. It seems like for every file I’m able to successfully get off, another is giving me fits. Bad sector, cannot read, so on and so forth.
So, I’m currently go through each disk slowly and trying to extract the files. Once I get all the files I can possibly get, I try and repair the disk. I haven’t gotten much farther than that because it’s taking a looooong time to do that.
I keep reminding myself that this isn’t nearly as bad as when I lost everything. I was MU*ing via a 286 black and white laptop on dial up and doing everything via TinyFugue for about a year and a half. On the account, I had a ton of logs saved from all my early MU*ing experience: Pern, Dragonfire, Indy by Night. It was a pretty big selection of my scenes, and a good example of how my ability to RP had actually improved.
I should have realized something was wrong when the ISP didn’t really send me any bills. Being young and stupid (as opposed to being not young but still stupid), I just smiled at my good fortune and went on MU*ing like nothing was wrong. Eventually, though, that ISP’s lack of good accounting caught up with them and they went under. From a user’s perspective, they just one day shut down. I lost -everything-.
I was able to get a small handful of logs from people I used to play with, but it was a very small amount compared to what I had. Ah well. It’s probably better that I don’t have a digital attic that looks like a virtual fire hazard anyway.