3.5 floppy

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
--
Ed Mc

On 11/01/2017 01:34 PM, Ed Mc wrote:
Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 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
I have one and it didn't take drivers, so seems to me it would work in
XP. However I'm in win10. But my thought is, USB is USB? Maybe?

I have a USB DVD and it works in Windows and Linux so....

On 11/01/2017 12:34 PM, Ed Mc wrote:
Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 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



It should work OK but the question is, are your old floppies still good?


Very likely most of them have gone bad

On 11/01/2017 05:13 PM, philo wrote:
On 11/01/2017 12:34 PM, Ed Mc wrote:
Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 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



It should work OK but the question is, are your old floppies still good?


Very likely most of them have gone bad
I have a real combo 3.5 and 5" floppy drive. Hooked it up to load a
few programs in 8 (maybe 7) and none of the (or the large part of them)
would run. No real stats to back this up but may have been the 16bit on
64bit problem.

Still they were pretty useless anyway. I did keep images and source
code though.

In article , says...

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

Yes drive will read a good disk. Problem is it's likely if any age at
all the floppies will only be good as fire starters. I have a large box
of them that I've basically given up on. Yes there may be a couple that
are ok but to go thru 1000's looking for them is futile.

That's the 3.5", the 5" original floppies aren't even worth putting in
the drive as it'll likely ruin the drive with particles coming off the
disk. I have old 8" reel-to-reel tape same issues, don't play 10 sec.
and heads so dirty ... e.g. just fire starters.

Thankfully haven't needed one for years now and anything essential is at
least on cd or if later dvd or later still then external hard disk and
dvd

Big Al wrote:
On 11/01/2017 01:34 PM, 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

I have one and it didn't take drivers, so seems to me it would work in
XP. However I'm in win10. But my thought is, USB is USB? Maybe?

I have a USB DVD and it works in Windows and Linux so....

"But my thought is, USB is USB? Maybe?"

USB devices are broadly defines by "Classes".
USB HID being one you're probably familiar with.
That's why mice and keyboards work. The mice
are likely to work for at least 3 buttons, with
other buttons requiring additional support.

Both OS platforms have Class support, which handles
a lot of driver cases for USB. It means many devices
are handled by "generic" drivers, with the registers
and features being defined by the Class specs.

http://www.usb.org/developers/defined_class

FEh Interface Application Specific
FFh Both Vendor Specific

If I wanted to make a USB device this minute, I
could use one of those two codes, to signal
that the OS doesn't have a driver. And I would
have to supply a driver for my product.

An example of an oddball might be USB flatbed scanners.
There's probably nothing in common amongst those,
and they use manufacturer supplied drivers.

*******

Here's the details for a USB floppy. The output makes
mention of USBSTOR, and since the machine this was
tested on (Win10 Insider) is unplugged from the network,
the driver is "in-box". The date on the driver is
2006, giving some indication how long the driver
has been around.

https://s1.postimg.org/7knz0q7uen/mitsui_floppy.gif

Mitsui probably stopped making those chips years
ago, so the real mystery is who had the deep
pockets to "bank" those chips and have something
to sell today. I'm not aware of any other chips
for the job. It's not like there was "robust
competition" for the floppy market :-) The
kids are not looking for a floppy under the
tree this Christmas.

Paul

On Thu, 2 Nov 2017 00:01:51 -0300, pjp
wrote:

In article , says...

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

Yes drive will read a good disk. Problem is it's likely if any age at
all the floppies will only be good as fire starters. I have a large box
of them that I've basically given up on. Yes there may be a couple that
are ok but to go thru 1000's looking for them is futile.

Perhaps the object of the exercise is to store the contents of the
disk on a more reliable medium.

When I got a Win 98 computer with a CD-RW drive I immediately set
about transferring the contents of my collection of floppies and
stiffies to CD-R.

I found that with very few exceptions the floppies, even those 15
years old, were OK, but stiffies as little as 3 weeks old were
difficult to read and produced lots of errors.


--
Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com

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

[This is probably nitpicking, but floppies formatted under DOS or Windows
using default tools (or preformatted in the box) are FAT12.]

I have an external 3.5" drive and Win7 has no problem accessing the disks,
but as philo pointed out, bit rot is a thing. (I also have an internal 5.25"
drive around here somewhere...)

--
You seem to view the world through the same broken mirror as me.

On 11/1/2017 8:09 PM, Paul wrote:
Big Al wrote:
On 11/01/2017 01:34 PM, 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

I have one and it didn't take drivers, so seems to me it would work in
XP. However I'm in win10. But my thought is, USB is USB? Maybe?

I have a USB DVD and it works in Windows and Linux so....

"But my thought is, USB is USB? Maybe?"

USB devices are broadly defines by "Classes".
USB HID being one you're probably familiar with.
That's why mice and keyboards work. The mice
are likely to work for at least 3 buttons, with
other buttons requiring additional support.

Both OS platforms have Class support, which handles
a lot of driver cases for USB. It means many devices
are handled by "generic" drivers, with the registers
and features being defined by the Class specs.

http://www.usb.org/developers/defined_class

FEh Interface Application Specific
FFh Both Vendor Specific

If I wanted to make a USB device this minute, I
could use one of those two codes, to signal
that the OS doesn't have a driver. And I would
have to supply a driver for my product.

An example of an oddball might be USB flatbed scanners.
There's probably nothing in common amongst those,
and they use manufacturer supplied drivers.

*******

Here's the details for a USB floppy. The output makes
mention of USBSTOR, and since the machine this was
tested on (Win10 Insider) is unplugged from the network,
the driver is "in-box". The date on the driver is
2006, giving some indication how long the driver
has been around.

https://s1.postimg.org/7knz0q7uen/mitsui_floppy.gif

Mitsui probably stopped making those chips years
ago, so the real mystery is who had the deep
pockets to "bank" those chips and have something
to sell today. I'm not aware of any other chips
for the job. It's not like there was "robust
competition" for the floppy market :-) The
kids are not looking for a floppy under the
tree this Christmas.

Paul

I think it's mostly about the BIOS.
I don't have any newer computers that have EFI,
but for my older BIOS computers, it works just fine.
I did the experiment moments ago.
Dell Optiplex 360 USB2.0
Dell USB Floppy FDD(FD-05PUB) with Teac insides.
Boots DOS 6.2 from the floppy.
Reads fine in win7.
I never tried to boot USB3.0, but I hear it don't work.

Second the reliability issue. The floppy that booted DOS
wouldn't read in win 7. Claimed the format was wrong,
but a different boot disk did read in win7.

I have had limited success erasing floppies with a bulk
tape eraser, then reformatting them in the drive they'll
be used in. Track alignment in old floppies is mechanical.
Any dirt in the mechanism can cause the track zero position
to change and make the read fail. Just reformatting didn't
work as well as first bulk erasing. Don't try that with
ZIP disks.

The number of floppies required to boot win7 boggles the mind.

On the issue of archiving, there's an ancient program that
creates .exe files that can be executed to recreate the floppy.
IIRC, it worked on copy-protected floppies. I used it to archive
a bunch of old diskettes. Also very handy for emailing a diskette
to someone, as they don't need to know anything to recreate it.

http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/page3.html

This IBM program is also on my system, but I don't recall using it.
Claims to be able to detect the disk format.

https://files.elektroda.pl/299194,dos11.html

On 11/01/2017 04:50 PM, Big Al wrote:
On 11/01/2017 05:13 PM, philo wrote:
On 11/01/2017 12:34 PM, Ed Mc wrote:
Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 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



It should work OK but the question is, are your old floppies still good?


Very likely most of them have gone bad
I have a real combo 3.5 and 5" floppy drive.Â*Â* Hooked it up to load a
few programs in 8 (maybe 7) and none of the (or the large part of them)
would run.Â* No real stats to back this up but may have been the 16bit on
64bit problem.

Still they were pretty useless anyway.Â*Â* I did keep images and source
code though.




Three years ago a friend of mine who repairs CNC machines had one that
ran OS/2 and needed to replace the HD and reinstall.

I needed to come up with a few floppies to get the installation started.

I must have gone through 50 of them in order to find three good ones.

On 1-11-2017 18:34, 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

Yes, I still have an USB Floppy drive and I was able to read my floppy's
before I destroyed them.
Using Win 7 Pro 64b.
So - it should work.

Fokke

On 11/1/2017 10:34 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

Thank you all for replies. I ordered a drive from Newegg. I'll let you
know how it goes when I get it.
--
Ed Mc

They work fine Ed i have one on my new system reads and writes to the disk's
just fine

--
AL'S COMPUTERS
"Ed Mc" wrote in message
news
On 11/1/2017 10:34 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

Thank you all for replies. I ordered a drive from Newegg. I'll let you
know how it goes when I get it.
--
Ed Mc

On 11/05/2017 12:22 AM, Andy wrote:
They work fine Ed i have one on my new system reads and writes to the disk's
just fine


Be careful with floppy disks. It has been a long
time since the media was reliable. Get your stuff
off and backup up in several locations: hard drive,
USB stick, etc..

On 11/3/2017 1:54 PM, Fokke Nauta wrote:
On 1-11-2017 18:34, 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

Yes, I still have an USB Floppy drive and I was able to read my floppy's
before I destroyed them.
Using Win 7 Pro 64b.
So - it should work.

Fokke

You need 32 bit version of windows 7

s