The much-maligned floppy is still used by many people because it is one of the things that can help preserve your sanity. You can boot from it if your system crashes (it can apply to anything from Linux to Windows) and you can even save accounting data on it (e.g., from MYOB or Quicken programs) faster than you can burn a CD. But what if your floppy has gone bad? Enter the QuickBooks data recovery tool!

A QuickBooks data recovery tool has been designed by both data recovery and repair service companies affiliated with Quicken and organizations not formally connected with the software publisher. And the tool’s capacity extends to recovering data from damaged media like the floppy.

MYOB has similar services. In fact, both accounting programs are said to have the same database functionality, only differing in the number of licenses each software package provides. MYOB is a single-user product and Quicken is a multi-user package.

The truth is accounting software publishers make good money off technical support such as data recovery. So the best place to get a QuickBooks data recovery tool or service is from online forums where you can ask for free advice or inexpensive downloads of recovery and backup tools.

There are also forums that offer you no repair-no charge data recovery service. One of them is QuickBooksUsers.com (http://quickbooksusers.com/datarepair.htm). Fees start at under $400 (which you don’t have to pay if they can’t fix your problem) and turnaround times are relatively fast at 12 hours to 2 working days.