The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
I have some old Amstrad CF2 disks that once belonged to my grandfather with all his research on his family history and several war diaries that he was writing with a view to publishing one day.
The Amstrad machine that he used to write the files on has long since found its way onto a scrap heap some where.
I was wondering if there is any method by which I can extract the data contained on the disks and transfer, convert and store on either a windows or linux based machine. Both of which I have access to.
AvieRose
One way or another, you will need access to an Amstrad 3" floppy drive. You may be able to find one on Ebay, or ask friends or colleagues if they have a similar old Amstrad system.
If you do obtain an Amstrad floppy drive, you will need to build an adapter to bridge it to a PC floppy connector on your motherboard. Instructions are here: http://www.fvempel.nl/3pc.html
(there was also a Slashdot discussion about this)
I'm from the US, so I'm not familiar with Amstrads in particular, but most of what I wrote here is applicable to any 1980s floppy-based personal computer.
Once you've acquired and connected the floppy drive, you can use a disk imaging program (make sure you use one that specializes in 3" Amstrad disks) to make disk images that you can mount on an emulator. That way you can view the disk's contents even if they can't easily be converted to a modern format.
If you can't find a drive, it looks like there are a few vendors in the UK who specialize in extracting data from old Amstrad disks -- I saw a few in the first page of Google results for "Amstrad CF2." You might also look for Amstrad hobbyist forums and see if any of them can vouch for a particular vendor.
If you go to a vendor, I recommend asking if they would be willing to give you bit-by-bit disk images in addition to converting the files to a modern format. That way you can be sure that you aren't losing any significant properties or metadata during the conversion.