All media will fail
It’s important to back up your data. Recently an instructor lost several tests he had saved on a floppy disk when the disk became corrupted. Unfortunately he did not have a backup of those files on his office computer or the network. I think floppies and zip disks are the most unreliable methods for storing files; I myself have had problems with zip disks and drives. But if you must use one of those for storing files, I recommend that you don’t directly open from and save to the media. Instead, copy the file you need from the media to your computer (desktop or My Documents), open it, edit and save it. When you are finished, copy it back to the media, overwriting the original, or even renaming it if you wish. This process minimizes the number of reads and writes done to the media, thereby reducing the likelihood of errors.
Sometimes data loss is a result of user error. Take for instance an instructor who thought she had downloaded images from her compact flash (CF) card to her laptop. She reformatted the CF card and to her horror discovered that she had not downloaded her pictures like she thought she had. Even in that case not all hope is lost. Thanks to jpegrescue [alternate], I was able to help her recover at least some of the images. (Note: if you realize you’ve accidentally erased all your pictures and want to try to get them back, don’t start filling up the card with pictures again. If you fill up the card again, you are writing “over” the images you erased but that are still hiding there just waiting to be recovered.)
For other data recovery, Foremost is a pretty good bet.
