On Mon, 13 Nov 2017 21:31:03 -0700, Ken Springer
wrote:


On 11/1/17 11:34 AM, Ed Mc wrote:

If I purchase one of the 3.5 USB external floppy drives available,
would I be able to access the files (FAT 32) on my old floppy's, using
Windows 7? I do have an old XP hard disk somewhere. Not sure if it would
recognize the USB ports though. Thanks



Interesting experiences and comments. So, I'll add mine.

A few months ago, I had a lady that needed some tutoring in using her
Mac laptop. When we were done, as part of the conversation, she said
she had some floppies from years ago that had some photos she would like
to retrieve. But, no one was able to read them.

I brought them home. Yep, I couldn't read them with any Windows
computer I tried. And, on some, I had to use my USB external drive. No go.

Kept getting a message that said the floppy could not be read.

Tried at least one of my Macs, no go. I don't remember if I tried the
Mac that actually has a built in floppy.

I think I tried my Linux computer, but I don't remember.

I have an Atari clone, tried that. It read every stinking file on all
of the floppies! Burned those files to a CD, and she was a happy camper.

Moral? Don't depend on mainstream systems to always work.



The problem was almost certainly with a missing media descriptor byte.
Read he
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ognized-by-win

And ignore the terrible solution they propose there. The best solution
is to format some diskettes on a modern Windows computer, then take
those newly-formatted diskettes and the ones you want to read to an
old computer running Windows 95 (if you can find one) then copy the
diskettes to the newly-formatted diskettes there. Those copies will
then be readable on a modern computer.