A long time ago I had to get a file off of a 3.5" diskette that was corrupted. Linux would panic but NetBSD just came out with the rump kernel. So I installed NetBSD and used rump. Rump crashed a few times but the system stayed up. So after a few tries I got about 80 - 90% of the document.
I miss the convenience and cheapness of diskettes.
Or is the medium itself damaged by time passing?
I'm asking because during Covid I dug out my old Commodore 64 and managed to read a few disks and created a copy of some that were still working.
On the other hand, there are many good disk drive emulators for the Commodore 64 now and these can be had for fairly cheaply (like a SD2IEC with a Epyx FastLoad combination), which will avoid the whole problem. I still use floppies with my 128, but I also push disk images and programs to it with a 1541-Ultimate.
ChrisArchitect•3d ago
Oct 2025 The people rescuing forgotten knowledge trapped on old floppy disks
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45545017