# It wants me to format a disk that's formatted

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-wants-me-to-format-a-disk-thats-formatted/106384>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 30, 2002, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-wants-me-to-format-a-disk-thats-formatted/106384 "2002-04-30T00:18:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Caesar\_s\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/73ab20/32.png) [@Caesar\_s\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caesar_s_Ghost)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2002, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-wants-me-to-format-a-disk-thats-formatted/106384/1 "2002-04-30T00:18:36Z")

</div>

Actually, not _me_ exactly, but my Nana. I go to the school she teaches at. She’s working on a “project” for school, 19 pages, and had it saved on a floppy so she could work on it at school and at home.

She saved on this disk–and even printed from it–just fine, until yesterday when it suddenly asked her if she wanted to format the disk whenever she attempted to open the document. We’re sure it’s the same disk…it’s a Word document and no matter where we try to open it from (My Computer–A:\ or Word–Open–A:) it asks this.

Any reasons why? And how to get it back? She’ll draft me into typing it for her again if we don’t get it fixed. :eek:

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2002, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-wants-me-to-format-a-disk-thats-formatted/106384/2 "2002-04-30T00:32:25Z")

</div>

Probably the disk went bad. **NEVER** keep your only copy of something on a floppy. The more often you save to or read from a floppy, the more likely it is to fail.

If you can find someone with Norton Disk Doctor, you may be able to get the data back. If not (and sometimes if so), you’ll still be SOL.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2002, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-wants-me-to-format-a-disk-thats-formatted/106384/3 "2002-04-30T01:14:37Z")

</div>

I agree the floppy disk probably went belly up but you might try reading it in another drive in case you get lucky.