liverygone wrote on 2025-12-04, 22:54:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-12-04, 19:44:

Ohh, I see. But no, cleaning the drive wasn’t the issue. It was getting files off a damaged floppy disk. Sadly I wasn’t able to, but then I struggled on putting files back to it, which I managed to solve in the end. 🙂

is it damaged or is it corrupted?

A bit of both. I had to swap the cookie inside with that of a different one. But sadly the image of disk 1 I thought was correct, turns out isn't.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-12-04, 23:08:

liverygone wrote on 2025-12-04, 22:54:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-12-04, 19:44:

Ohh, I see. But no, cleaning the drive wasn’t the issue. It was getting files off a damaged floppy disk. Sadly I wasn’t able to, but then I struggled on putting files back to it, which I managed to solve in the end. 🙂

is it damaged or is it corrupted?

A bit of both. I had to swap the cookie inside with that of a different one. But sadly the image of disk 1 I thought was correct, turns out isn't.

at this point just have it read all data from it and dump the info

Okay, I managed to do an experiment. I kindly asked someone, who's selling a floppy disk copy on eBay of the 'same version', if they could send me an image of disk 1. I wasn't expecting to get a reply to be honest, but they did. 😁 Sadly, I had the same problem like with the other images I've tried online. It won't accept my disks after disk 1. I can only presume that each copy of the game has some unique code, serial, or copy protection that differentiates them. So I guess that's that. Short of buying them all again, which isn't cheap, I'll just keep the disks for preservation. At least they all work. Kind of.

I still have the original cookie. I'll have to try putting into a different floppy chasis and try again with rescuing the files, but I'm not hopeful. I'll just grab all disk images online and put them on the Gotek.

The guy offered to send me images of all 5 of his disks, which was super kind. So I'll most likely backup the contents of my disks and replace them with these. 😀

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-12-05, 22:07:

The guy offered to send me images of all 5 of his disks, which was super kind. So I'll most likely backup the contents of my disks and replace them with these. 😀

good luck!

DaveDDS wrote on 2025-11-29, 02:41:

HD = High Density - can store 1.44M (1.2M for 5.25") DD = Doubke Density - can store 720k (360k for 5.25") FDC = Floppy Disk Con […]
Show full quote

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-11-29, 01:33:

Um, what’s HD, DD, and FDC?

HD = High Density - can store 1.44M (1.2M for 5.25")
DD = Doubke Density - can store 720k (360k for 5.25")
FDC = Floppy Disk Controller - the PC hardware that talks to the floppy drives.

DD disks have only one hole in the edge at the back, usually it has a slide to allow it to be covered - This enables Write Protect

HD has an extra not-coverable hole on the other edge at the back (away from slot side) - this lets the drive/FDC know that it needs to use a different data rate and magnetic strength when talking to the disk - the media is also different - if you put DD media in and HD case (or vice versa) it won't work correctly (but might still appear to work in some cases)

Btw, the reason the lower is "Double"density - way back in the dark ages when floppies where first invented the data was stored a certain way which later became known as "Single" density (SD) - later on techniques were developed to store the data with less embedded clock bits which resulted in twice as many effective data bits in the same area - this was called "Double" density (DD) still later methods were developed to use higher data rates and differenr magnetic coericivity to store even more data bits "High" density (HD).

SD was never officially used on the PC ... (and many PC FDCs can't even do SD) - hence the lowest capacity disks commonly used on a PC are DD

I have some questions concerning ImageDisk’s formatting. I’m not particularly clued up on the technicalities of floppy disks, but it asks to specify the Interleave. The Sides I get. Double-step, Interleave, specifying the Sectors/Tracks, and Data Rate Type, I’m not sure about. I left them at defaults. But are there specific values I should setsfor a 3.5” 1.44 HD disks? Thanks.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-12-24, 16:03:

DaveDDS wrote on 2025-11-29, 02:41:

HD = High Density - can store 1.44M (1.2M for 5.25") DD = Doubke Density - can store 720k (360k for 5.25") FDC = Floppy Disk Con […]
Show full quote

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-11-29, 01:33:

Um, what’s HD, DD, and FDC?

HD = High Density - can store 1.44M (1.2M for 5.25")
DD = Doubke Density - can store 720k (360k for 5.25")
FDC = Floppy Disk Controller - the PC hardware that talks to the floppy drives.

DD disks have only one hole in the edge at the back, usually it has a slide to allow it to be covered - This enables Write Protect

HD has an extra not-coverable hole on the other edge at the back (away from slot side) - this lets the drive/FDC know that it needs to use a different data rate and magnetic strength when talking to the disk - the media is also different - if you put DD media in and HD case (or vice versa) it won't work correctly (but might still appear to work in some cases)

Btw, the reason the lower is "Double"density - way back in the dark ages when floppies where first invented the data was stored a certain way which later became known as "Single" density (SD) - later on techniques were developed to store the data with less embedded clock bits which resulted in twice as many effective data bits in the same area - this was called "Double" density (DD) still later methods were developed to use higher data rates and differenr magnetic coericivity to store even more data bits "High" density (HD).

SD was never officially used on the PC ... (and many PC FDCs can't even do SD) - hence the lowest capacity disks commonly used on a PC are DD

I have some questions concerning ImageDisk’s formatting. I’m not particularly clued up on the technicalities of floppy disks, but it asks to specify the Interleave. The Sides I get. Double-step, Interleave, specifying the Sectors/Tracks, and Data Rate Type, I’m not sure about. I left them at defaults. But are there specific values I should setsfor a 3.5” 1.44 HD disks? Thanks.

does it give a specific error?

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-12-24, 16:03:

I have some questions concerning ImageDisk’s formatting. I’m not particularly clued up on the technicalities of floppy disks, but it asks to specify the Interleave. The Sides I get. Double-step, Interleave, specifying the Sectors/Tracks, and Data Rate Type, I’m not sure about. I left them at defaults. But are there specific values I should setsfor a 3.5” 1.44 HD disks? Thanks.

Sorry, I was away for a month and didn't check here till now...

ImageDisk was designed to assist in recovery of floppy disk, most specifically those from older (pre-PC) systems.
I tried to set reasonable defaults - and it does generally work quite well for "casual" users, but to get into the more complex stuff, you really do have to "know what you are doing" - If you are trying to recovert/restore irreplaceable media, I really think you should spend the time/research to not do irrecoverable damage!

Much of this is covered to some extent in the document or help... but here goes:

Interleave - Historically systems were not fast enough to handle the next (sequentiak) on an already spinning disk. To avoid slowdown by having to wait a whole revolution, most disk are written with "interleave" this means the sectors are "spaced out" by recording in non-sequential order - eg: instead of 1,2,3,4,5 the disk might be 1,3,5,2,4 which allows an extra sector time (on the spinning disk) before the next logically sequential sector comes up. Spacing can be more than 1sector which is (interleve factor)

Tracks are "rings" of data as written and read by the head as it is positioned to a certain ring. Most disks have either 40 or 80 tracks but some are different (eg: 8" disks usually have 77 tracks, original 5.25" spec. was for 35 tracks)

Some disks can do more than one ttype of media - the HD 5.25" disks in a PC have 80 tracks, but they can access non-HD disks which were written on 40-track drivces, hench "double stepping".

Sectors are blocks of data on the disk within a track ,are numbered, some start at 0, some start at 1 (and some really odd ones start at >1), same with tracks.

Data-rate is how fast the floppy controller transfers data bits to the drive - this depends on the drive/media type. ImageDisk will figure this out as it reads a disk - best to just write down the parameters applicable to different drives & media. This will normally be either 250kbps for certain smaller drives (SD, DD) and 500kbps for HD drives - but you really have to know what you are doing if you want to mess with this (and most of the prameters)