99 Floppy Disk Reader Drive,CIpotZIZ 3.5 inch External Portable USB Floppy Diskette Converter Player Support for Windows 2000/XP/7/8 Notebook PC Desktop + 5pcs Black Reusable Fastening Cable Ties (White) 11As time passes and floppy disks become relics of computing’s past (especially in the Macintosh world), folks seem to be confronting more problems accessing information stored on this older format. 00Working with Macintosh Floppy Disks in the New MillenniumZmarthumb - USB Floppy Disk Reader Drive, 3.5 External Portable 1.44 MB FDD Diskette Drive for Mac Windows 7/8/XP/Vista PC Laptop Desktop Notebook ComputerDON'T Support USB 3.0 67 22.99 22. USB Floppy Disk Reader Drive, TSV 3.5 Portable USB External 1.44 MB FDD Diskette Drive, External Floppy Disk Reader Drive Fit for PC Windows 98/ SE/ ME/ 7/ 8/ 10/ 2000/ XP/ Vista, Plug and Play HEMOTON Laptop External diskette Drive Portable USB 2.0 Floppy Disk High Data Transfer Driver for window window Win7 (Black)ANDTRONICS Esynic 3.5' USB External Floppy Disk Drive Portable 1.44 MB FDD USB Drive Plug and Play for PC Windows 10/7/8, XP, Vista, Mac (Black) 3.2 out of 5 stars 5 1,193.00 1,193.The available option is a 3rd. Below are the most common scenarios: 400k and/or 800k Floppies with an External USB Floppy DriveAs is well documented, modern Macs from this millennium (and some before) no longer come with built-in floppy drives. “Hey! I’ve got a floppy drive on my Mac, and it reads some floppies just fine, yet not others.
3.5 Floppy Disk Reader Driver For WindowWhile there were many reasons for this, one was Apple’s penchant to innovate and improve upon the standards. One of many, many causes was the higher price of Macintosh computers. That is why Mac floppy drives make sounds of different audible pitches as they move around the disk surface: the motor speed is changing! As of the emergence of high-density (HD) floppies in the early 1990s, Apple was growing weary of being slammed around in the marketplace. Similarly, double-side double-density (DSDD or for our purposes DS) 3.5" floppies hold 720k on a Wintel, and 800k on a Mac.How did Apple do this? By using a variable-speed spindle drive system instead of fixed-speed, to cram more data on the same magnetic material space. You may have noticed (or not) that long ago, when floppies were common, the original 3.5" single-side double-density (SSDD or for our purposes SS) hard-case floppies held something like 270k or 360k on PC-compatible computers (if they even used those… i didn’t and don’t know) while the same floppy formatted and used on a Mac held 400k. All the ones i have seen connect via USB.What is Not well-known is that these drives, being more generic, lack a crucial feature of Apple-specific floppy drives: Variable Speed. 400k Floppies and Mac OS 8.0 or LaterSo ya say ya gotta Mac with a built-in SuperDrive that is allegedly able to handle 400k, 800k, and 1.4 MB disks, and it does work with 800k DS and 1.4 MB HD disks, yet not with 400k SS disks? Well, you need more than the drive… you need the correct Mac software.Please look carefully at the two images just above this paragraph. (I don’t have/could not easily make a 360k floppy to test this theory.)Unless you can find an external USB drive that specifically claims to support Mac 800k disks (i really doubt you will find one that supports 400k), you will almost certainly need to find an older Mac with a built-in floppy drive to access your data on DS and SS disks. My guess would be that they could read 360k SS floppies from other systems. They’ll likely also read 720k DS floppies. This is fact: With 1.4 MB HD floppies, Apple agreed that fixed-speed drive was what they would use.Bottom line: a generic fixed-speed external USB floppy drive will work with 1.4 MB HD floppies, yet (to the best of my knowledge, and i may be wrong) not Mac 800k or 400k floppies. It was a whole lot easier and more financially sane for Apple to go with the flow and use the same standards for 1.4 MB floppies as the Wintel world… economies of scale, dontcha know! This is all my conjecture, anyway. With the 128k ROMs, System 3 , and all that came HFS: Hierarchical File System: folders that were actual directories and subdirectories.For backwards compatibility yet moving the world forward, Apple decided that the Normal Order of Things would be that 400k floppies would be formatted as MFS when erased, and 800k and larger floppies as HFS. It had the illusion of folders, yet no actual directories. MFS — Macintosh File SystemYou’re suffering from the MFS Blues! MFS, the original Macintosh File System, was a flat-file structure used on Macintosh computers from Day 1 until the era of the 128k ROMs and the Mac Plus, which is to say circa 1986. The working, mounted disk Finder window—same disk, same conditions—was when the very same Mac was running OS 7.6.1. The “unreadable” picture was when OS 9.1 was in charge. The difference? The Mac OS version running the machine. 800k DS disks formatted 400k MFS?Many Mac users have found it tough to let go of their older Macs, especially early on when they were (relatively) very expensive pieces of equipment. Clicking the Two-Sided button formatted the disk as 800k HFS. Apple needed to count on the user to make the correct choice (screenshot is from System 3 running on a Mac Plus):Clicking the One-Sided button formatted the disk as 400k MFS. Folks who used these tricks could create 400k HFS floppies for sure, and maybe 800k MFS floppies.)Thing is, on these early Mac OS versions which supported both MFS and HFS, there was no electro/mechanical way to detect DS from SS diskettes. Someone found out that the less expensive Sony single-sided 3.5" diskettes sold new during this period more often than not formatted successfully as 800k double-sided. Rumors circulated circa 1987 that due to lower demand for single-sided 400k diskettes, Sony merely ran the same production line for double-sided 800k and single-sided 400k, marking them differently and probably not QAing the second side for the ones being sold as single-sided. 400k SS disks formatted 800k HFS?!As well, floppy disks were expensive in the mid-late 1980s. Thus, while rare, it may not be terribly unusual within a specific floppy disk collection to find disks marked DS/DD with 400k capacity and MFS formatting. Sitting in front of their 512KE or newer Mac (with 128k or larger ROMs), they might very well want to format a double-sided diskette as single-sided, for use in their older Mac(s)—especially in the latter years of the 1980s and thereafter when SS/DD 3.5" floppies first became scarce then disappeared from the market. Avg antivirus for mac filehippoWith Mac OS 8.0, Apple eliminated OS support for MFS format. System 7.5.0 through 7.5.5 allowed writing to as well as reading from MFS-formatted floppies, but did not allow erasing/formatting SS and DS disks as anything other than 800k double-sided HFS or ProDOS (Apple II format), or 720k DOS:The screenshot is from OS 9.1, yet other than cosmetic alterations, it’s the same dialog all the way back to System 7.5 (7.5.0).The upshot of all this is one cannot trust the marking on the diskette! Probably the single-side/double-side marking (when it even exists in the first place) will match reality, but don’t count on it!This is how things worked and remained pretty compatible from something like System 3 up through the end of Mac OS 7 (7.6.1). Which OSes supported what?Allowing (requiring) the user to select single- or double-sided when erasing (formatting) a floppy disk remained as shown above all the way through the end of System 7.1 (7.1 Update 3). A failure to format dialog would appear and the disk would be ejected, as in the case of defective diskettes attempting to be (re- or initially) formatted at any capacity. You need OS 7.6.1 or earlier to work with 400k MFS disks. If you have information or programs on obsolete 400K diskettes that you want to access, copy the files to your hard disk, an 800K diskette, or a 1.44 MB diskette before installing Mac OS 8.So, OS 9 ain’t gonna cut it. 400K diskettes and Mac OS 8The 400K MFS diskette format is not supported by Mac OS 8. ![]() I’ve not been desperate enough to go beyond these for the very few floppies unable to be fixed by these two programs. I start with the latest version of Apple Disk First Aid my Mac will run (8.6.1 for Power PC Macs, 8.2 for 32-bit 680x0 Macs, 7.2.4 for 24-bit Macs), then move to AlSoft DiskWarrior 2.1.1 (end of the 2 series). Most of the usual repair utilities that can repair hard drives can also fix floppy disks. I never used these much, and don’t know if they can do anything that DFA and DW cannot.
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