3.5inch external floppy disc drive

[ancientmariner]

Not sure if this in in the correct place. I have some photos on floppy disc that I would like to transfer onto my MacBook Pro and iMac. Can anyone tell me if an external floppy disc drive will work okay on mac OS? Thanks
Martin

 

[gsahli]

USB connected? Should work. Doesn't hurt anything to try.

 

[ancientmariner]

Great thanks very much.Just got to get the drive now then
Martin

 

[RadDave]

Great thanks very much.Just got to get the drive now then
Martin

As already stated, should not be a problem, e.g. plenty USB floppy drives are available cheap on Amazon (see pic below of first two of many hits) - both state Apple compatible and P&P, but look at the comments and Q&As to make sure about their use w/ a Mac machine. Also, depending on the number of disks needing conversion and your budget, there are plenty of online sites, such as HERE. Finally, I'm sure a number of local Office or Drug stores could do a transfer for you to a USB drive. Good luck. Dave

 

[chscag]

One thing I would add about using a 3.5" USB floppy drive with your Mac.... And that is the drive will not appear on the desktop until you insert a floppy disk. Many folks assume the drive is bad when they plug it in and it doesn't appear on the desktop.

 

[pm-r]

I have some photos on floppy disc that I would like to transfer onto my MacBook Pro and iMac.

What vintage and type and format are the floppy disks?

Just as a heads-up, the more recent USB floppy drives cannot read or access the Mac double-density 800kB 3.5" disks and I'm not sure about some of the single-sided floppys.

An older Mac with an Apple floppy "super-drive" installed and working is required to salvage data from those floppys.

Been there, and done that many times. Plus recovering and converting some data from some old Apple Pro-DOS 3.5" disks that was quite the challenge.





- Patrick
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[chscag]

Hey Patrick...

If memory serves me, isn't there a way to convert the data from the old 800K 3.5" disks to the newer format 720K (not the 1.44MB)?

 

[pm-r]

@chscag

I don't know and don't remember, if I ever did, but somehow I thought the 720K and 800k 3.5" disks were virtually the same but Apple was able to get the 800k storage somehow.

That's a long time ago and I was just getting into Macs and computers in those days.




- Patrick
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[pm-r]

Hey, here's a pretty good article and summary with lot's of info:
Working with Macintosh Floppy Disks in the New Millennium
http://siber-sonic.com/mac/newmillfloppy.html

Also some info that may help the OP.




- Patrick
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