Retrieving text documents from a 2.0 MB/2.0 HD floppy disk?

Question

I'm attempting to retrieve text documents from a floppy disk that is a 2.0 MB DS HD floppy similar to:

The only thing he knows is that the documents were created on a Mac around 1996.

What are some ways that I can retrieve these text documents and what software problems should I expect keeping I have no idea what application or OS was used to create the documents?

Answer 1

From my experience, you have two options:

1. Use a utility called "MacDisk For Windows" from (https://macdisk.com/mden.php) that has a good chance of allowing a PC that is equipped with a Floppy Drive (USB or Otherwise) to read the HFS or HFS+ Formatted Macintosh Disk you have. I've used this in the past with good results.

If you are concerned about using this old disk in a newer PC and running into a formatting error so severe it may damage your media the choose option

2. Locate someone locally who has a G3 Blue and White, G4, or G5 Apple Macintosh that is still equipped with a floppy drive, and copy the disk contents to a standard formatted Flash Drive which would be visible by both PCs and Macs. I specify these apples because they use early versions of OS X, or even run OS 9, are highly likely to include a floppy drive in their standard configuration, and a USB port for the flash drive. (as duskwuff mentioned, the G5 might not be the best since it does not support internal floppy drives and only runs OS X so you would still need to get a USB floppy - mentioned it because it could still be available on the used market)

It may be a good idea to acquire one of these legacy Power Macs anyway, since you may run into this issue in the future - diskettes, in the wild, tend to roam in packs. You maybe able to find a functional one inexpensively.

Also, the files on the disk may be in some odd Macintosh application format, like Claris, Appleworks, Office Macintosh, or some other non-cross platform extension that may require you to manipulate it and convert it to a PC-readable file type from the original data. I doubt that time is of the essence, since this floppy has probably spent many seasons in retirement already.

Answer 2

That's the ubiquitous 1.44MB 3.5" floppy. Any modern floppy drive should be able to read it; the hard part is finding software that understands the format -- Mac-formatted disks aren't readable by Windows.

The first thing I'd try is plugging a USB floppy drive into a Mac and reading the disk directly: if you're lucky, everything should just work, and you can copy the files onto the hard drive to try various options for reading them. If it doesn't, you're probably looking at a data-recovery effort, which can get a bit tricky.

The files may be plain text or SimpleText documents, in which case TextEdit can read them. If not, LibreOffice is free and supports a wide range of old Mac word-processor formats.

Answer 3

On floppy media that was not sold as preformatted, the unformatted capacity was commonly stated. ~2 MB is the unformatted capacity of what is commonly called a ‘1.44 MB’ floppy.

However, the actual low-level format on the floppy could be:

• PC DD format, which is 360 or 720 KiB. A PC drive can physically read that.
• Mac 800kB/400kB format. A non-specialty PC drive will choke on it.
• PC HD format. 1440 KiB. PC drive can read.
• PC specialty formats, like 1720 KiB. Unlikely that someone wrote to such a floppy from a Mac. PC drive can read with luck (these formats traded capacity for reliability) and an OS that supports it.

The filesystem could be:

• a DOS style FAT filesystem (any Windows or Linux PC can deal with that)
• a Mac-specific filesystem (MFS, HFS, HFS+) - will need extra software in Windows, and manual/special handling in Linux (a floppy automounter, if present, will likely not work).

The Documents:

Unless they are plaintext (and even then, you might need a text editor that is configurable regarding character and newline encoding), you will need whatever software can process the given format.

In case of a documented, or semi-plaintext, format, you might be able to write a rudimentary decoder yourself.

If the filesystem is Macintosh specific, it is important to know that these filesystems actually treat files as a pair of two "subfiles", so called forks. Macintosh applications often made use of that, and a file is incomplete and probably unusable if one of these forks is lost. Special attention has to be paid when handling this kind of file, since some non-Mac drivers will either only give you one of these forks or present them as two separate files (sometimes with one of them as a hidden file).