Natalie Nemes, on the Library of Congress’s Tangible Media Project:
Tangible media objects like optical disks, USBs, and of course floppy disks are […] subject to damage that could make their data unreadable. Optical disks can start to decay after approximately five years, floppy disks are subject to demagnetization, and flash drives can lose their electrical charge.
To read and reformat damaged media, she uses a Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device (FRED), including a special process for floppy disks:
[We] use a specially constructed machine we call the “Frankenstation” to read our 3.5″ and 5.25″ floppies. The Frankenstation is a floppy drive that contains trays for both floppy sizes. The floppy drives connect to a floppy controller — either a KryoFlux (for 3.5″ floppies) or an FC5025 (for 5.25″ floppies) — with a SCSI cable. Then, the floppy controller connects to a micro FRED (affectionally called Fernando) with a USB-B cable. Using software that can copy floppy disks sector by sector, we then create ISO files of the floppies’ contents. […] Finally, we use digital forensics software to extract file trees from those image files.
Homegrown rigs to support specific processes like this feel so human.