by Caralie Heinrichs and Emilie Vandal
The floppy disk was once ubiquitous. More than five billion were sold per year worldwide at its peak in the mid-1990s. Floppy disks helped enable the “personal computer” revolution and the creation of an independent software industry. With the last company ceasing production of floppy disks in 2011, diskettes have quickly become obsolete (International Business Machines Corporation, n.d.).
It is becoming increasingly difficult to retrieve disk contents due to the obsolescence of software and hardware as well as the susceptibility of floppy disks to physical degradation over time. This has led the archives community to borrow techniques and tools from the field of digital forensics, notably the practice of disk imaging, which creates an exact digital copy of the original disk.
This exhibit will explore some of the challenges and best practices for digitizing and preserving 3.5-inch floppy disks. We will also walk through the process of digitizing a floppy disk using BitCurator, based on our experience working in the University of Ottawa Archives and Special Collections (ARCS) in November, 2019 for the Cultural Heritage Resources course (ISI6354).
The floppy disks used for this project come from the Monique Frize fonds. Be sure to check out some of the files recovered from the floppy disks, as well as our complete Digital Preservation Guide which includes detailed step-by-step instructions for the digitization workflow.