Atari ST Floppy Disks Backup
Hi Experts
A (very...) long time ago, I had an ATARI 1040 ST that I used for music production using the (future) Steinberg PRO24 sequencer. Time has flied.... Computer is gone, but I still have a dozen of the 3.5 inch floppy disks with PRO24 music files. They may be unreadable by then, but would like to give it a try and backup their content before it's all gone. Issue is I no longer have the ATARI computer, only the disks. I may buy a spare ATARI 1024st later but that's not the intent today. I have a Windows 10, computer with VMware installed, an external 3.5 Floppy USB drive, various HDD...How can I backup the content of these old floppies? Of course, I plugged in the floppy external reader on USB using Windows 10, but the format of the ATARI disks are unreadable directly in W10. Thanks for your advice
A (very...) long time ago, I had an ATARI 1040 ST that I used for music production using the (future) Steinberg PRO24 sequencer. Time has flied.... Computer is gone, but I still have a dozen of the 3.5 inch floppy disks with PRO24 music files. They may be unreadable by then, but would like to give it a try and backup their content before it's all gone. Issue is I no longer have the ATARI computer, only the disks. I may buy a spare ATARI 1024st later but that's not the intent today. I have a Windows 10, computer with VMware installed, an external 3.5 Floppy USB drive, various HDD...How can I backup the content of these old floppies? Of course, I plugged in the floppy external reader on USB using Windows 10, but the format of the ATARI disks are unreadable directly in W10. Thanks for your advice
John Tsioumpris
strecover should read Atari ST disks...but of course no way to try it
Does this work for an USB external floppy drive?
The Atari disks are double density (720/800K) not HD. Make sure your floppy drive can read that format.
Everything I have found says Windows should be able to read them if your drive is compatible.
Everything I have found says Windows should be able to read them if your drive is compatible.
By description it seems it reads standard size floppies...360 K & 720K ...for everything else you need an internal one
recommend this. ive used it.
https://chrisbertrandprogramer.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/st-recover-1-0/
https://chrisbertrandprogramer.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/st-recover-1-0/
Thanks. Investigation ST Recover but looks like does not work well with external USB floppy drives. Finding a way to get around
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Tough...
1- The external USB floppy drive is not recognized by Windows 10, so I installed using VMware a virtual machine running XP
2- That fixed the windows issue, the drive is recognized
3- Installed ST recover but as expected, it cannot read my Atari floppies, most likely for the reasons you guys indicated
So the idea would be that I buy a spare internal Floppy drive, but the interface would be IDE and my PC is recent and uses SATA. So I would have to also buy an IDE to SATA converter. All this would cost in the area of $50 without garantee of success. Some more dollars and I could buy a spare Atari ST, but not sure it would have a utility to image floppies. What are your thoughts? Any other creative ideas?
1- The external USB floppy drive is not recognized by Windows 10, so I installed using VMware a virtual machine running XP
2- That fixed the windows issue, the drive is recognized
3- Installed ST recover but as expected, it cannot read my Atari floppies, most likely for the reasons you guys indicated
So the idea would be that I buy a spare internal Floppy drive, but the interface would be IDE and my PC is recent and uses SATA. So I would have to also buy an IDE to SATA converter. All this would cost in the area of $50 without garantee of success. Some more dollars and I could buy a spare Atari ST, but not sure it would have a utility to image floppies. What are your thoughts? Any other creative ideas?
How about finding an old computer with internal floppy...i am pretty sure if you ask around someone will have something..
yea, old PCs usually have one in and should be easy to pick up.
All, I have closed this question. ST Recover is the best proposal I got but in the end I will probably have to use an old computer with an internal floppy drive. Thanks for your support