Floppies do sometimes go bad, so be sure you back up your information. It would be a good idea to burn it to a CD. One thing you should know, so you don't get an unpleasant surprise, although it isn't really a problem and won't do any harm. If you leave a floppy in its drive when you turn off your computer, the next time you turn the PC on, you will get a message warning you about it and saying to remove it and "press any key" to continue. In that case, just push the button to take out the floppy disk and hit the space bar, and all will be well.

Some Sony digital cameras do use regular 3 1/4 in. floppies. I just copied this from the technical report on a sony digital camera: "# Stores images on floppy discs # Discs can be read by virtually all Macs and PCs with floppy drives." Since the claim is that the disks can be read from the floppy drive of most computers they must be formatted the same. I don't understand how they could be read by both PC and Mac computers but don't know anything about Macs at all. I think that since the pc says the disk isn't formatted that either it hasn't been formatted or has been formatted in a form that the pc can't recognize. I can't explain how different disks from the same package would behave differently. Maybe some were preformatted and some weren't. Unless you can try it in another computer you may as well go ahead and format it.

My mom had been happily using her PE-Design box until a virus knocked out her computer. When we went to reinstall the PE-Design software, we found that the second floppy disk was bad and couldn't be ready by any PC. I contacted Brother, but unfortunately they don't have that software anymore:    "Unfortunately, the Brother PE-Design 1.1 programmed    floppy diskettes are no longer available or being    manufactured. You may either try to locate someone on the    Internet trying to get rid of their copy or contact a    Brother Authorized Pacesetter Dealer to see if they may    have a copy at their store." Does anyone have version 1.1 of the PE-Design software? In particular we need the second disk. If you do we'd love to have a copy so that my mom can get going again.

I wouldn't worry about the install disks at all. Someone might want them. As far as the ones with personal info on them, do you have a good strong magnet around the house? Even refrigerator magnets can wipe out data on disks. I remember one guy who came into the store with a bag full of software he bought at a fairground sale. He couldn't get the disks to load. I checked them out and they were partially erased. As I emptied the bag, there were three refrigerator magnets in there advertising the place he bought the software from! I'd run a good strong magnet over the ones with data, then if you really want to be a bit more secure, format the disk and then copy something of no value onto it to overwrite anything that may be on there. Make it much more difficult to recover. You can do this a few disks a night while you're watching tv or something or even while you're surfing.