help! how to recover water logged floppies?

From: Marion Bates <mbates_at_whoopis.com>
Date: Sun Apr 20 08:32:00 2003

Bummer! Well, dunno if this will be helpful to you or not, but we had a
zillion 3.5" floppies from 1984 (first Mac) and they got immersed in
water during Hurricane Andrew in 1992...they didn't work at all, so
figuring we had nothing to lose, I slit the labels, popped 'em apart,
and removed the disk itself, wiped down both surfaces with Q-tips and
rubbing alcohol. Then I took new floppies and disassembled them, tossed
the blank media, and put the old disk inside the case...taped back
together, and almost all of them worked well enough to recover the
data. The real issue seemed to be that the two paper pads swelled and
wrinkled, then dried, depositing lint on the disk surface and impeding
spin. The disks themselves seemed to weather the water fine.

(The Mac itself survived Andrew also -- I still have it. Only hurricane
damage was a couple dead keyswitches on the keyboard, I replaced those
and all's well -- 11 years later. :) If only the roof had been so
durable...)

Good luck...

-- MB

On Sunday, April 20, 2003, at 09:07 AM, Chandra Bajpai wrote:

> I had a small accident in my basement a couple of days ago and in
> cleaning everything out I discovered an old box of 5.25 TRS-80/Heathkit
> floppies with all my old stuff on them were damp with water. I let
> them
> air dry overnight, but some of them still don't spin freely.
>
> What can I do to recover these disks - I hate to lose them. What sort
> of
> damage does water cause to floppies?
>
> Thanks,
> Chandra
Received on Sun Apr 20 2003 - 08:32:00 BST