Do you have an extract all command or something like that? Maybe the program caches the disks this way.

Copy all the files from the floppies into a single folder on the computer and then extract.

Copy the zipfile.zip file from your disk #1 to your computer and rename it from zipfile.zip to zipfile.z01, continue with disk #2, changing it to .z02 and so on with disks #3 and #4, copy the .zip file from disk #5 and leave it as zipfile.zip.
Open that file in the software of your choice like 7zip, Winrar, you should be able to extract everything without the constant swapping between floppies.

Shouldn't the original zip files already be named like that? OR did that change at some point.

Thank you to everyone for your prompt replies.

I used the advise given by lolo799. It seems to work very well.

I would have one question :
When I try to open the files listed in zipfile.zip (coming from disk #5), I can open every listed file, as expected.

But, when I try to open zipfile.z01 folder (and zipfile.z02, zipfile.z03, zipfile.z04), I am getting a message saying that the folder cannot be opened as an archive.

So my question is the following :
Are all the files coming from the whole backup listed under the single zipfile.zip folder ?

Once again, thank you in advance for any reply.

Patrick

patrmich wrote on 2020-11-05, 08:55:

Are all the files coming from the whole backup listed under the single zipfile.zip folder ?

Most probably yes. To make sure count roughly the (packed) size of files displayed, it should exceed by far the capacity of one floppy and be close to 5 floppies.

1- I checked the size of the files displayed in zipfile.zip and it matches approximately the size of five floppy disks (5 x 1440 Ko)
Therefore all the files from the backup have been properly restored.

Thank you again for this help in this matter.

2- I tried to restore another backup made from 15 floppy disks.
For 2 floppy disks, I met the following error message :
the disk media is not recognized it may not be formatted

Would you know what does it mean and how to overcome the trouble ?

Thank you .

Patrick

Those disks have probably gone bad. They may read in another floppy drive though. I have a few different drives that I use for reading old floppies because some will not work in one drive but they will work in another.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-11-04, 21:13:

Shouldn't the original zip files already be named like that? OR did that change at some point.

Winzip for Windows 3.1 had to retain compatibility with the way pkzip/pkunzip handles spanned archive, writing floppies directly, which writes the index of the archived content in the last disk of the backup set.

patrmich wrote on 2020-11-05, 13:26:

1- I checked the size of the files displayed in zipfile.zip and it matches approximately the size of five floppy disks (5 x 1440 […]
Show full quote

1- I checked the size of the files displayed in zipfile.zip and it matches approximately the size of five floppy disks (5 x 1440 Ko)
Therefore all the files from the backup have been properly restored.

Thank you again for this help in this matter.

2- I tried to restore another backup made from 15 floppy disks.
For 2 floppy disks, I met the following error message :
the disk media is not recognized it may not be formatted

Would you know what does it mean and how to overcome the trouble ?

Thank you .

Patrick

You should try making a dump of the 2 floppies that gives you the error, using some appropriate software, depending on what OS you are using on your current computer.

I wanted to copy (to a hard drive) a set of floppy disks related to an old (year 1996) WinRAR archive.

When trying to copy the content of the first floppy disk, I got the following error message : "the disk media is not recognized it may not be formatted"
Therefore, I tried to use other methods :

1- I tried to open the floppy disk with another floppy disk reader. But I got the same message error.

2- I tried to copy the content of the floppy disk from the prompt command. At first it seems to work. The name of the file was displayed on the hard disk, and also its size and creation date.
But after a short while, the display disappeared.

And I got the same error message.

3- I tried to use Winimage to dump the floppy disk.
After having read 95% of the disk, I got the following message :
"Disk error on track 76, head 1
Sector not found
the disk media is not recognized it may not be formatted"

If anyone has got any suggestion, it would be great.

Thank you again.

Patrick

If you have unreadable sectors in a file, most software won't be able to read that file. You could try something like "Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier", which is more thorough than Windows Explorer, and may recover more. If nothing cab read that sector or sectors, you have lost part of your backup.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-11-05, 14:45:

Those disks have probably gone bad. They may read in another floppy drive though. I have a few different drives that I use for reading old floppies because some will not work in one drive but they will work in another.

On which drive type and brand did you sucieded the most on? I know that teac arent that reliable when trusting on backup older disks that could be damaged in some sort.

patrmich wrote on 2020-11-06, 10:25:

I wanted to copy (to a hard drive) a set of floppy disks related to an old (year 1996) WinRAR archive. […]
Show full quote

I wanted to copy (to a hard drive) a set of floppy disks related to an old (year 1996) WinRAR archive.

When trying to copy the content of the first floppy disk, I got the following error message : "the disk media is not recognized it may not be formatted"
Therefore, I tried to use other methods :

1- I tried to open the floppy disk with another floppy disk reader. But I got the same message error.

2- I tried to copy the content of the floppy disk from the prompt command. At first it seems to work. The name of the file was displayed on the hard disk, and also its size and creation date.
But after a short while, the display disappeared.

And I got the same error message.

3- I tried to use Winimage to dump the floppy disk.
After having read 95% of the disk, I got the following message :
"Disk error on track 76, head 1
Sector not found
the disk media is not recognized it may not be formatted"

If anyone has got any suggestion, it would be great.

Thank you again.

Patrick

95% readable is pretty good, try making the image with another software that will retry and skip over unreadable sectors.
Maybe TestDisk can do it...

Did zip files at that time store recovery data in the archive?

Robin4 wrote on 2020-11-06, 17:59:

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-11-05, 14:45:

Those disks have probably gone bad. They may read in another floppy drive though. I have a few different drives that I use for reading old floppies because some will not work in one drive but they will work in another.

On which drive type and brand did you sucieded the most on? I know that teac arent that reliable when trusting on backup older disks that could be damaged in some sort.

I was using a couple different USB Dell drives.. one from the old latitude laptops that also have a usb port and a dedicated USB one. I also had a USB 2x speed floppy drive but it died.