Floppy Disk Problems

[kid curry]

when i try using my floppy drive i get a message saying that "the disk in driva 'A' is not formatted, do you want to do it now?" when i click NO the dailog box goes and the floppy will not open. if i put a new floppy in the drive, i get the same message, but if i click on YES to format it, it says that "Windows was unable to complete the format"

any ideas please, as i have a lot of "stuff" on my floppies, but cant get to them.

Bye for now, The Kid.

[fo3nix]

Firstly, I'd strongly suggest not using floppys anymore, and certainly not storing the only copy of your information on them. They are and always have been very unreliable. A far better alternative would be a flash drive:
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/87012

Sounds like the floppys are corrupted. To try and reformat them, you can insert them, go into my computer, right-click your A drive and click format. Click start and hopefully it will format.

[qapmoc]

This sounds like the floppy drive itslf is not working correctly, this is often a problem with drives which are not used very often because the casing cooling fans draw air in and some of it will go in via the floppy drive and you often find them full of dust.
You should either take it out and blow out the dust or just buy a new floppy drive they are pretty cheap these days.