Dear Friends,
Back in the late 1990s, I used floppy discs (2 HD, 1.40 MB) for recording Finale Recordings and for musical compositions. However, many if not most of the discs (used in a DYNEX Slim USB External Floppy Disk Drive [DX-EF101]) aren't working. I am also not able to transfer the data from Finale 2000 to the present Finale (Finale Version 25.5.0.259). Do you have any suggestions?
Hi,
Were Macintosh versions of the software used? If so, any information about the exact Macintosh models and their operating systems? Are all floppies Mac-formatted 1.44 MB (HD)? Any PC-formatted disks?
As you probably know, 800K (DSDD/2DD) Mac disks can not be read by a USB floppy drive (since it does not have a variable speed).
Has it been possible to read any of the floppy disks under Big Sur?
Do you have access to older Macs, possibly with built-in floppy drives?
One should perhaps not rule out that a number of floppies have been damaged. The magnetic properties change with time, leading to difficulties reading the disks in some cases. Also, it may work better with one floppy drive than another, partly because of alignment differences.
The following article could perhaps be of interest to you.
https://siber-sonic.com/mac/newmillfloppy.html
I have taken stashes of floppy disks from a Church secretary office 4 years ago. Only 3 of 20 were readable. And they were taken reasonably good care of. So the fact that any floppies are still usable is nothing short of a miracle.
Floppy discs to OSX Big Sur 11.3
