USB Floppy Drive That Can Read 2-DD Disks?

I need to access some info from some 2-DD floppies, and I got a Sony MPF88E for this purpose. Although it says in the manual it can read these disks, it doesn't; I put the disk in, it sounds like it's spinning, and then stops, without displaying an icon, and Disk Utility doesn't see anything there. The drive was able to read an HD floppy just fine. I told this to Sony and they said it should read 2-DDS, so it must be defective. I got another drive with the same result. Also, I tried two different 2-DD floppies each time with the same result.
Interestingly, I went looking for another drive and see the SmartDisk 2x floppy drive on the Apple Store, but one reviewer says it doesn't read 2-DD disks: http://store.apple.com/us/reviews/T8169LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&p=1&s=topSellers
I can probably pick up a Quadra or something for the price of a drive, but for convenience sake (I've got boxes full of floppies I'd like to archive and get rid of), I'd really like a USB drive.
I also see a Lacie floppy drive out there with favorable reviews except that it's "slow," which for floppies is something you kinda have to live with, but it's a "1x" drive, and I wonder if this spec might have anything to do with its reading ability? The Sony and the SmartDisk are both "2x."
Can anyone recommend a USB floppy drive that can definitely read 2-DD disks?
Thanks!

I can tell you that the LaCie drive with a mechanism by Y-E Data definitely has the same problem. I first tried using it yesterday and couldn't get it to read any of the disks I wanted to use. I contacted LaCie, and their tech had no idea what the problem was. This morning, I tried all the disks I have lying around and two worked like a charm. I thought it had something to do with brand until I realized they were both HD disks and the rest were DD disks. Y-E blames it on the lack of capability in the Apple Driver in OSX, but either way, I still can't read my DD disks in 10.5.6.

Similar Messages

  • Purchased a USB Floppy Drive..Having trouble installing?

    I'm trying to install, having trouble understanding pdf manuel. Can anyone explain in true laymen terms. I have intel mac and trying to learn the cp language. How do you get the mac to read the floppy when it is inserted?
    ALL INFO FROM YOU EXPERTS WILL BE OF GREAT VALUE
    Thank you
    Lisa

    Hi, Lisa.
    If you have a USB Floppy Drive, all you need to do is connect it to one of the USB ports on your Mac. Then insert floppy. That's it.
    Performance of floppy drives under Mac OS X is notoriously slow compared to under Mac OS 9, but they work. With a Mac, there's no software to install: it's truly plug-and-play with USB floppy drives.
    What specific brand and model number of USB floppy drive did you buy?
    My wife has a Targus model PA905 external USB floppy drive that works properly with all our Macs and her work PC.
    Good luck!
    Dr. Smoke
    Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

  • USB Floppy Drive with Leopard?

    I'm not sure where else to post this... I have an NEC USB Floppy Drive that used to work under Tiger. Since updating to Leopard, the drive is no longer recognized.
    It does, however, work under Parallels Desktop running Windows XP (I got a message that a Flashbuster-U floppy drive was detected.)
    The drive is pretty old - it was part of a laptop project from 1998 or so, and while it is still functional, I'm surprised that the support isn't built in anymore.

    I did a Google search on "NEC USB floppy" as well as "mac usb floppy" and found nothing other than information regarding SuperDrives, various flavors of Iomega drives, and something called Pace that referred to floppy drives in OS9.
    Oh well. Pain in the butt to run Windows every time I would need it (and honestly the need is not that great) but as long as I can make it work...
    -Z

  • Can I encrypt a USB hard drive that's not for time machine?

    can I encrypt a USB hard drive that's not for time machine?

    Yes, if it has the GUID Partition Map Scheme, but only by erasing it and choosing a new format.
    See #2 in Using Disk Utility.

  • Tips for working with USB floppy drives

    I was just wondering if anyone had any tips on working with USB floppy drives in Archlinux.
    One thing I've noticed is that trying to use mkfs.msdos on my USB floppy drive directly doesn't seem to result in a usable disk (it's mountable, but reports that I don't have enough space available to copy files), but if I use the command on an image file the same size as a floppy disk and then use dd to copy the blank image to my USB drive I get a disk that's perfectly usable.  Anybody know what the deal is with that or how I might be able to successfully format a disk in fewer steps (other than keeping the blank images around and just using dd to format the floppies, haha)?
    Also, I'd like to hear any other tips or tricks any of you have for working with USB floppy drives.  They just seem so much more usable under Windows as opposed to Linux, and that disappoints me a little.

    jmetal88 wrote:Okay, thanks guys.  I haven't figured out the issue yet, but you're helping me narrow it down.  I decided to run a df -h command after each try of formatting the disk this time.  I tried the low-level ufiformat command followed by a mkfs.msdos on the device, using a 720k disk, and df -h showed 700k free on the file system.  It's just not making the file system large enough (I believe the file I was trying to copy over was 710k or so).  When I run mkfs.msdos on a 720k disk image and then dd the image over to the drive, df -h shows 713k free after mounting the drive.  Any idea why mkfs.msdos isn't filling out the full 720k on the disk itself, but is on the image?
    I would assume this happens because (as far as I can tell from skimming through the source over the course of a few minutes) mkfs.fat only applies floppy size heuristics to fd and lo devices -- your USB floppy drive is treated as a hard drive, and that leads to less-than-ideal default parameters. Run
    fsck.fat -v
    on the more spacious filesystem to figure out what options need to be set when you attempt formatting an actual disk. Or just make things easier by keeping newly-formatted blank disk images on hand so that dd and (maybe) ufiformat are all you need to worry about.

  • USB floppy drive compatibility

    Alright. I really hope you guys have an answer for me.
    I posted this in "input devices" and didn't get any responses. Hopefully I'll have better luck here:)
    I purchased a SmartDisk USB floppy drive. When I installed the software, Classic launched (this is when I became a bit concerned).
    I restarted my machine, put a floppy (formatted for Mac) into the drive and waited. The icon that was supposed to show up on my desktop wasn't there. I tried a few floppies, with the same results.
    I followed all of the instructions, but I'm not seeing any floppy icons on my desktop. When I check in System Profiler, the floppy drive is recognized.
    On the box, compabitility for Mac OS 8.5 and above is claimed...
    Any help is appreciated!

    This is what it says:
    <code>Windows: Disk in drive x: is not formatted, do you want to format now? Mac: Floppy Disk does not mount on the desktop.
    We have learned that on some computers, powering up the computer with the floppy drive connected can put it in a state where it will not properly read floppy disks. To see if this might be the situation on your particular system, try either of the following as a potential workaround:
    1. Power up the computer with the floppy disconnected. Then connect the floppy drive, allow it a few moments to mount, and attempt to read a floppy.
    2. If the computer was already powered up with the floppy drive connected and the floppy drive does not appear to be performing normally, disconnect the floppy drive [using the "Unplug or Eject Hardware" icon in the Windows taskbar, or by dragging to the Trash on the Mac]. Then reconnect it and try to read a floppy disk.
    3. We also need to make sure that we are using 1.4MB HD (High Density) Floppy Disks, not DD (Double Density) Floppy Disks.
    4. Try the drive on different USB ports, or another machine. Make sure that you are not connected through a hub or other device, but directly to the machine.</code>

  • USB Floppy Drive Driver

    I recently switched to Mac, and was trying to get my new MacBook set up. I have a DYNEX USB floppy drive (Model: DX-EF101), and need to connect it to my computer. Is there a driver I can use, or one that works for most external USB floppys?
    MacBook2,1   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   2 GB RAM, 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor

    Have you tried it? Most USB storage devices "just
    work".
    One thing you will want to do, is always drag the
    floppy disk icon to the trash, before you manually
    eject the real floppy disk.
    Yes, nothing shows up.

  • Mounting USB Floppy Drive under Tiger

    Hi,
    I have some content on Mac-formatted floppies I'd like to retrieve. I have 3 Macs at my diposal, 2 PPC running Tiger (one of which has Classic installed) & mine as below. The floppy is recognized at the HW-level (USB under system profile), but not at any level above that; eg, in Finder, Disk Utility or /Volumes.
    What do I have to do to make it visible so I can access the content? It only has to be readable.
    Thanks,
    GAM
    P.S. Apologies if this has been asked &/or answered before. I tried to find where to search this forum and it is not at all obvious. I can see (what is to my mind) a general Search box in the upper right of the page, but not (as the forum Help says) a Search Forums box.

    "Again - why would the density of the floppy in the device affect whether or not the device itself is visible in the Finder/Disk Utility or under /Volumes? Once it was mounted & you tried to access it, then the density would come into play, wouldn't it?"
    Well, it may seem odd, but the fact is that the drives that could read and write 800K Mac floppies spun at 3 different speeds (only Sony made these drives for Apple), whereas the PC 720K and 1.44MB floppy drives would only spin at 2 speeds. So the Mac drives could read the PC disks (usually with an extra utility in the early days), but the PC drives could not read Mac 800K disks. On the other hand, the Mac 1.44MB format only used the 2 speeds that the PC drives used. These USB drives are 2 speed drives, so they cannot read Mac 800K disks, but they can read Mac 1.44MB disks and PC 720K or 1.44MB disks.

  • SA30-414 boot from the USB floppy drive

    Hi All!
    I'm tryin to get my my satellite A30-414 to boot from the USB floppy drive and enter the dos mode, but all i get is a black screen (without a cursor, of course!!), and then the windows XP logon page directly. Can you tell me whether this model has a boot device menu hotkey?
    Also, I may have permanently changed some boot configurations (namely by holding down the F12 at startup and then the F2 key at a later try) with my attempts to get the machine to boot from floppy drive: now even when the floppy drive is not connected i get this awkward black screen and then, after a few seconds, the windows logon page. How can I acceed the setup menu and check?
    Thanks in advance for your help!

    Thanks to you all for your support!
    Now I'll tell how this problem originated. I connected the standard usb fdd with a standard DOS boot disk to which I had added a firmware upgrade for my DVDrom unit. I powered on and held the F12 key down expecting to see the boot device selection menu, instead i got a black screen for a few seconds and then the winXP logon page. At this point i rebooted and held down the F2 key with the same purpose. But the computer went into some kind of hybernation and by pressing the power-on button it shut down.
    From that moment on startup I don't see the BIOS POST page anymore: countless seconds of black screen and then the WinXP logon page. The most optimistic explanation to this is that i inadvertently changed the boot order, so it searches for floppy first, and when it doesn't find it then it goes to C:\. Does it sound logical?

  • My USB super drive is not reading DVD

    when i connect my usb super drive is not reading DVD

    External SuperDrive DVD player fix - RESOLVED!
    This solution worked for my Superdrive, which I had installed in a USB external case, so now it can play movies using Apples DVD Player App, but additional steps may be needed, as I outline below.  I had removed the SuperDrive from my mid-2009 Macbook Pro 15" 2.53 ghz to install a second hard drive with Other World Computing's "Data Doubler" adapter, and mounted the SuperDrive in an OWC Value Line SuperSlim external case.
    I don't know if the first two steps below are necessary, but I had done them first, because others suggested them as fixes before I found the solution in the 3rd step.
    1) I installed Apple's SuperDrive Firmware Update 3.0, which is on Apple's support site at http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201953
    2) Then I applied a fix on this page, http://www.hardturm.ch/luz/2011/10/how-to-make-the-macbook-air-superdrive-work-w ith-any-mac/comment-page-12/#comment-106449, using Text Wrangler to edit the preference file at /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist by adding code mbasd=1 between the two string values. However, that still did not resolve the problem. I left the preference file with the code “mbasd=1″ included, as outlined on that site.
    3) Then, I used the fix at http://macriot.com/mcrt/?p=2294 which requires modification of some code embedded into OS X’s DVDPlayback framework; essentially replacing the words “internal” with “external”
    Now my external Superdrive plays movies using DVD Player. 

  • USB floppy drive not getting recognized

    I've just bought a USB floppy drive, and when I plug it in and insert a disk, it is not recognized. The drive itself works fine. I've read that when I put in an improperly formatted disk it should prompt me to initialize the disk, but this did not happen... and I don't have any properly formatted disks to try.
    If it matters, my ultimate goal here is to create floppies that will be friendly with really old Macs, and my only resource is my MacBook Pro.

    If they treat their hardware like most manufacturers they would provide a new driver. I have an HP printer that is 4 years old and HP provided me a new Leopard driver. It is only plug and play if the correct drivers are in place. Since it is an older piece of equipment it may have not been included with Leopards development. Check the IBM site for new drivers.

  • I cannot create a folder on USB flash driver that was format in Windows

    I have a USB flash drive that was format and use for my Windows PC.
    When I used the USB flash drive on my Macbook, I can read the file but cannot create folder.
    Is that the IOS restriction?
    Thanks for replying.

    Click on the drive, choose Get Info from the File menu, and check the format.
    If it's formatted as NTFS, reformat it as MS-DOS, exFAT, or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as desired.
    If it's formatted as FAT32 or exFAT, use the Disk Utility's Repair Disk command on it.
    (82812)

  • Equium L350-10L - WXP installation without USB Floppy Drive

    Hi Guys,
    Recently purchased a L350-10L and I'd like to upgrade to Windows XP from Vista. ;-)
    I'm aware I need the Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers loaded during the XP installation but I don't have a USB Floppy Drive. I've tried using USB key but with little success. Is there any way to do this without a USB FDD or have I gotta bite the bullet?
    Many thanks for your time,
    Leon Rice
    [email protected]

    I agree with kody. On this forum you can find fantastic threads with precise description how to use nLite software for WXP installation. Just use Advanced search option.

  • Usb floppy drive

    Hi all,
    I just bought a usb floppy drive. Anybody could help me to access floppy device, please? Do i need to create device first or solaris will auto detect it?
    thank you in advance.
    regards,
    zonex

    Does the VAIO have USB ports and at least Win 98? Pretty much I use the thumb drives for small files. I've got a 128 MB SanDisk Cruzer Mini that I've been using for a couple of years. I've also got an unopened 256 MB version. These things are so cheap that a reasonable sized one is a must.
    Other than that, I've got a macally USB floppy drive. It's really, really slow, even compared to a typical internal floppy. I'm not sure why I bought it other than for the rare case I get or find something that comes in a floppy.

  • Windows Virtual PC 2007 USB Floppy drive

    I'm planning to get VirtualPC 2007 for Vista Home Premium SP2, and I wanted to make up a collection of Windows'es from 1985 all the way to 2015. I'm not even sure if 64 bit is enabled in my bios, but I will just change it if not. But since i'm using a laptop
    from the newer generation I have no floppy drive, which about half of the windows versions are on. But I have 2 USB floppy drives, and I want to know before I waste all my money on Windows/286. So it narrows it all down to this, Is VPC 2007 compatible with
    USB floppy drives?
    Thanks,
    -CookieHumm

    oh yes, you are unfamiliar with windows sharing. no prob.
    First off you have to set up a network on your windows PC. I don't know how savvy you are with your PC, but basically you have run the network setup wizard. You might also have to set up a protocol in your network properties (usually IPX will do the trick). If you click on the windows start button and see a network button near the my computer button you are most of the way there.
    Once you have your computer set up for networking you need to enable sharing, which you also do in the network properties (there is a checkbox somewhere).
    Lastly, you need to specify which folder(s) you want to share! Just right click on the drive (D: for example) in my computer and click 'sharing'. Naviagate the menus and enable sharing.
    Your MBP is already set up for talking to windows networks, so just go to finder and click on networks, pick the workgroup that you specified when you set up your network on your windows machine and click ok. A connection to your external drive should appear. Now you can drag and drop all the files you want.
    Sorry if this is confusing, but I can't really rememeber all this stuff off the top of my head.
    If you want more clarification, search for 'how to share in windows XP' or something like that.
    Good luck

Maybe you are looking for

  • Google map inside the spry collapsible panel

    So this time I've bumped into interesting 'bug'. I've placed the google map inside the spry collapsible panel. Panel is set to the closed mode on load of page. When I open the tab, map appears, but address marker is hidden behind the top left corner.

  • Looking for a strait forword answer about the CS5.5 Upgrade. How does this differ with the CS5?

    I just got Flash Professional CS5 3 months ago. Now I see a latest Flash Software (CS5.5) out but the upgrade is costly. I'm going threw Creative Edge to learn how to be more familaer with what projects I can do. As I was going threw a new book threw

  • Stack that implements try and catch problem

    Hi guys, i'm pretty new to java (and programming all together) , have a difficulties with this calculator i'm working on. I've got a stack which holds for instance 5 + 6 * 2 which equals 17. What i have is: Stack<String> expression = new Stack<String

  • A string of question about Locking & Isolation Level

    Hi All It is highly appreciated if someone give offer answers to my below questions 1) There are two ways of locking mechanism: Pessimistic & Optimistic. In general, do all J2EE app server support all these two ways of locking ? 2) It seems to me tha

  • AJAX using an XML Process

    Hi All, I am trying with Ajax using xml process and i implmented the same logic but it got failed. can u please me the line what does this menas: cursor data_cur is select empno, ‘<![CDATA[‘ ||            ename ||’]]>’ from emp where deptno = :F130_D