Excavating data from ancient disks
Q I have a boxful of 5.25-inch floppy disks that I used during college in the 1980s, and I’d like to extract the information from them. Where can I find a drive that supports these disks?
A Many new computers don’t even include a 3.5-inch floppy drive anymore, let alone a drive that can accommodate the older 5.25-inch diskettes, so your best place to find a floppy drive is probably eBay or a site that sells old computer equipment. Some computer repair shops may also have working floppy drives.
Finding one may be the easy part. Getting a floppy drive running with your computer and getting your operating system to recognize the data on the diskette may be a challenge, especially if you are not adept at fiddling with hardware or poking around in your system’s settings. In an ancient how-to article, Microsoft offers instructions at support.microsoft.com-/kb/75564. Depending on how the files were saved, you may also need software to convert the files into a format that can be read on your computer.
Packing up your old floppies and sending them to a service that converts data from one storage medium to another may be the easiest way to free the old files. Several Web sites sell data-transfer services, usually from floppy to compact disc. FloppyDisk.com, for example, charges $25 plus postage to read four floppies and transfer the data to CD; details are at www.floppydisk.com/transfer.htm. Similar services are available at www.stanq.com/conversion.html and www.emaglink.com/floppy-disk-conversion.htm.
Q The iTunes program has an option to back up the library to CD or DVD. How can I back it up to a USB flash drive?
A Recent versions of iTunes include a “Back Up to Disc” option under the File menu. It walks you through the steps needed to back up your playlists, audio and video files to a CD or DVD for safekeeping, in case your hard drive goes south and takes your media collection with it.
You are not limited to backup discs, though. You can drag copies of your iTunes file to an external hard drive or USB flash drive. Once you have your backup drive connected to the computer, you need to find your iTunes files. Unless you changed the default location, the iTunes folder and files can be found by going to My Documents to My Music to the iTunes folder in Windows XP or 2000; in Vista, start with the Music folder and go to iTunes. On a Mac, go to your Home folder to Music and then to iTunes.
Dragging the entire iTunes folder to your external drive icon makes a copy of your media files, playlists, album artwork folder and library database. If you don’t have room for all that and just want to backup selected albums or songs, open the folder called iTunes Music, which is inside the main iTunes folder. The tracks are sorted into folders by artist name with album folders inside, so find the files you want to back up and drag them to your external drive.