With accessing the floppy drive but then the computer would not see the floppy drive at all, which is not your problem.
It could be that the head of the drive that wrote to the floppy was mis-aligned or that the one you are trying to use is. So long as the same drive is used to read as was used to write, you wouldn't notice a problem. But with two different drives, it's hard to tell which one is out of whack.
The other possible problem, also seen with old magnetic audio and video tapes, is that the magnetic layer could be coming off the substrate. For historic and valuable recordings, there are methods to re-stick the magnetic layer (if it's not too far gone) and then read the information.
I'm curious about the CDs you said someone saved your stories to. Did they use a burning method that simulates using a floppy - use a rewriteable CD or write different sessions to a CDR? My father always insisted on using CDRWs and lost tons of information, never making a backup that was recoverable.
Writing different sessions to a CDR worked OK, but was still not as reliable as simply burning a basic data CDR in one session that is closed at the end of the process. I have CDRs that I burned with my first CD burner in 1999 that are still readable - I copy the data onto new media regularly but the oldest ones are still good.
I was never able to recover Dad's data from CDRWs but the multi-session CDRs had data I could get by using data recovery software. You might try those if you can't find your Terra Drive.
All in all, you are better off locating your Terra Drive!
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