Preserving Legacy Data: The Importance of Floppy Disk Preservation

Hackaday reports on the challenges of preserving data stored on magnetic storage devices from the 80s and 90s, such as floppy disks. These storage methods are slowly degrading, making data recovery difficult after several decades. However, in a recent project, the Bloop Museum was able to successfully decode information from a 5.25" floppy disk last written to in 1993 using a DEC PDP-11. They used a GreaseWeazle controlled by a Raspberry Pi to generate an audio file from the data on the disk and then worked backwards to extract usable information. The data on the disk was from a digital stenography machine, and decoding it required further expertise.

Source: Hackaday.