Can't copy that floppy

In the headlong rush from current to new technologies, it's amazing what we forget. Sometimes without even realizing it.

I'm in the midst of a year-long effort to declutter my home office of 18 years, which has led to unearthing some historic business cards. Last weekend, I also discovered that I apparently have not thrown out a single 3.5" floppy disk that I have ever owned.

This was clear as I gazed at the literally hundreds of floppy disks, both Mac and IBM formatted. My first thought was I'd see what was on them, transfer important data to compact disc, use an audio/video bulk eraser to wipe the disks, then donate the floppies to a school or other organization that might use them. I had begun this time-consuming process when I noticed something.

Not every disk had two square holes on its top edge.

Now a missing extra hole may not seem like much. But it surfaced a nagging recollection that not all 3.5" disks may be alike. I took a closer look at the labels: TDK Micro Floppy Disk MF-1DD. Fuji Film Micro Floppy Disk MF1DD Single Sided. C Itoh MF 1DD Micro Diskettes Single Sided. 3M DS, DD 1.0MB. Egghead Software MF-2DD (Double Sided, Double Density).

Wait a minute. Aren't all floppy disks today 1.44MB? I grabbed a recent one, labelled TDK MF-2HD. Ah. Today's 3.5 inch floppy disks are all double-sided, high-density floppy disks (you'll see an "HD" embossed into the plastic of most). Many of the disks I had found were double-sided, double-density (720-800K formatted capacity) or single-sided, double-density (roughly 360K capacity). Not only were these old, I couldn't use many of them in a current floppy disk drive -- even if they were all 3.5 inch disks.

This may seem like an academic trip down nerd memory lane, until you realize that all of the data on those disks is, effectively, lost. I expected I wouldn't be able to recover data on the Mac-formatted disks, as the only Mac I have in my home office doesn't have a floppy drive (and most new Windows computers don't have floppy drives as standard, either). But I did expect I'd be able to at least see what was on the IBM-formatted disks.

Noted author Greg Benford wrote about a similar problem in his 1999 book-length essay, Deep Time. There, the challenge was communicating to ourselves across thousands of years, taking into account changing cultures and technologies. In my case, the span was much shorter -- 20 years, from my first Mac in 1986 -- but the results equally problematic.

You have to wonder how much useful data -- from old income tax and accounting files to partly-completed novels -- are currently on storage media in homes and offices from which there is no easy retrieval.

Personally, I'm about to find out. I just spotted several boxes of 5.25 inch mini floppy disks from my old Apple //e. Who knows what else I -- or everyone -- has forgotten?