About Floppy Recovery Ireland

Bob Horvat — Founder

Floppy Recovery Ireland was founded by Bob Horvat, driven by a genuine passion for data preservation and retro computing. Bob has spent years working with legacy magnetic storage media and understands both the technical challenges of reading degraded floppy disks and the personal or professional value of the data stored on them.

Every disk that comes through the door gets his personal attention. There are no junior technicians, no outsourced read attempts, no generic "we tried and failed" responses. If the data is recoverable, Bob will find it.

The business grew from a simple observation: floppy disks are still out there in large numbers — in attic boxes, factory cabinets, recording studios, archive rooms, and inside machines that are still running production lines — and the number of people with the hardware and expertise to read them is shrinking every year. Floppy Recovery Ireland exists to bridge that gap.

Why Data Preservation Matters

A floppy disk from the 1980s or 1990s holds something that can never be recreated: the original document, the original recording session, the original machine configuration, or the original family photo collection. Once the magnetic layer degrades beyond recovery, that data is gone permanently.

The same is true for industrial media. A CNC machine's toolpath disk, a sampler's sound library, a medical device's calibration data — these are not just files, they are what make the equipment work. When those disks fail and no backup exists, the cost can be enormous.

Floppy Recovery Ireland takes that responsibility seriously. Every job is approached with the assumption that the data matters and that the original disk deserves to be treated with care.

The Technical Approach

We use dedicated professional hardware — not repurposed PC drives from a skip — to perform flux-level reads of every disk. This captures the raw magnetic transitions on the disk surface, preserving information that a standard sector read would discard. It is the only approach that reliably handles degraded media, non-standard formats, copy-protected disks, and the proprietary sector layouts used by industrial equipment.

Where a disk has surface damage, we assess it physically before inserting it into a drive, and discuss the realistic recovery prospects with you before attempting anything that could cause further wear.

We are based in Malahide, Co. Dublin. All media is processed within Ireland. Data does not leave the EU.