Can I Read 3.5 Floppy Diskettes on Linux
Call back floppies? Back in the day, they were essential. Eventually, they were replaced, and floppy disk drives vanished from new computers. Hither's how to access a vintage 3.v- or v.25-inch floppy disk on a modern Windows PC or Mac.
There's a Catch: Copying Data Is the Like shooting fish in a barrel Part
Before we begin, you should understand a huge caveat. What nosotros're going to cover hither—copying data from a vintage floppy deejay onto a mod PC—is simply half the battle. Once yous copy the information, you accept to be able to read it. It might be locked in vintage file formats modern software can't understand.
You'll have to figure out how to access or convert the data using emulators, such as DOSBox or other utilities, which is beyond the scope of this article.
RELATED: How To Utilise DOSBox To Run DOS Games and Old Apps
How to Re-create Files From a 3.5-Inch Floppy Drive to a Mod PC
If you have 3.5-inch floppy disks formatted for MS-DOS or Windows that you want to re-create to a modern Windows 10 or Windows 7 PC, you're in luck. This is the easiest format to work with. The three.v-inch floppy drives held on as a legacy production long after their 1.44 MB capacity had become absurdly small-scale in relative terms. Every bit a event, there are many semi-modernistic drives and solutions bachelor. We'll encompass the options from easiest to most difficult.
Option 1: Use a New USB Floppy Drive
If you scan Amazon, Newegg, or even eBay, you'll notice many inexpensive (anywhere from $10 to $xxx) modernistic USB three.5-inch floppy drives. If you're in a hurry and want a plug-and-play solution for only a disk or 2, this might be worth a shot.
Still, in our feel, these drives are ofttimes frustrating in their unreliability. And so, before yous dive in, read through some of the reviews. Make sure yous're okay with risking your vintage data on a bulldoze that probably cost merely a couple of dollars to produce.
Option 2: Use a Vintage USB Floppy Drive
In the late '90s and early '00s, many manufacturers of slim laptops (like HP, Sony, and Dell) also produced external USB floppy drives. These vintage drives have much higher quality parts than the inexpensive USB drives now on Amazon. They're as well notwithstanding contempo plenty to work without any repair.
Nosotros recommend searching eBay for something like "Sony USB floppy drive," and trying your luck with one of those. Most are still supported as plug-and-play devices by Windows ten.
Despite the branding, you lot don't demand a bulldoze that matches your PC. For example, a Sony USB floppy drive will piece of work when connected to a USB port on any Windows PC.
Choice 3: Use an Internal Floppy Drive with a Inexpensive USB Adapter
If you lot're looking for more of a roll-your-own claiming, you lot could also buy a vintage internal 3.5-inch floppy drive. Mayhap you lot even take ane sitting around. You can connect it to a generic floppy-to-USB adapter.
You tin can rig an external power supply for the floppy drive with the proper adapter. Another option is to mount the drive and adapter internally in a computer case, then use a SATA power adapter there. We haven't tested those boards, though, so proceed at your own adventure.
Selection 4: Use a Vintage Computer with a Floppy Drive and Network Connection
If you have an older Windows 98, ME, XP, or 2000 PC or laptop with Ethernet and a 3.5-inch floppy drive, it might exist able to read and copy the floppy to the computer's difficult drive. Then, y'all can copy the data over your LAN to a modernistic PC.
The trickiest office is making sure the LAN networking betwixt your vintage and modern machines works properly. It comes down to making Windows file sharing from different eras play dainty with one some other.
Yous can as well upload files to an FTP site (maybe, via a local NAS server), and then download them to your modern PC.
How to Copy PC Files From a 5.25-Inch Floppy Drive to a Modernistic PC
If you have v.25-inch floppy disks formatted for MS-DOS or Windows you desire to copy to a modern Windows PC, yous take a more hard task ahead of you. This is because 5.25-inch floppies fell out of regular employ in the mid-1990s, and so finding a working 5.25-inch floppy drive can exist a challenge.
Let'south look at the options for copying the data to a mod PC from easiest to near hard.
Choice ane: Use the FC5025 USB Adapter and an Internal 5.25-Inch Floppy Drive
A small visitor called Device Side Data articles an adapter chosen the FC5025. It allows you to use an internal 5.25-inch floppy disk drive to copy data from 5.25-inch disks in various formats over a USB cablevision to a modern PC. The board costs around $55.
Withal, you'll as well need all the necessary cables, a power supply with a Molex connector for the drive, and, maybe, a vintage external five.25-inch drive bay enclosure if you desire a prissy unit of measurement. One time you lot go it set upward, the FC5205 is definitely worth it, though. It'south especially helpful if you also accept 5.25-inch disks for non-IBM PC systems (such as Apple 2) that you want to back up.
The FC5025 copies the floppy information to deejay epitome files, and then you'll as well demand a disk image tool, like WinImage, to read and extract the data.
Option 2: Use a Kryoflux with an Internal 5.25-Inch Floppy Drive
Much like the FC5025, the KryoFlux is a floppy-to-USB adapter that requires a great deal of setup to get working. Again, you'll need the KryoFlux lath, a vintage 5.25-inch floppy drive, a power supply, cables, and, possibly, an enclosure.
The Kryoflux copies the deejay's information to disk image files. You can then use these with emulators or access them with a disk image tool, like WinImage.
The advantage of KryoFlux is information technology tin can back up re-create-protected disks, or disks in many other system formats (Apple II, C64, and so on), and it does and so with a high degree of accurateness.
The KryoFlux does have a few drawbacks, though. Kickoff, it costs over $100.
Second, it'south intended for the academic-software-preservation market rather than general consumers. This is why backing upwards, or even accessing the data on the disk, isn't a very user-friendly operation.
Option 3: Use a Vintage Computer with a Floppy Drive and Network Connection
If you have an older PC running Windows 98 or ME with Ethernet and a five.25-inch floppy drive, information technology might be able to read the floppy and so yous can copy the data over LAN to a modernistic PC.
The same equally the 3.5-inch drive option, you might have trouble getting Windows file sharing to work properly betwixt a vintage and modern PC.
There are other options, though. One is uploading the files to an FTP server from the sometime auto, then downloading them from that server to the newer computer.
How to Copy Files From a 3.v-Inch Floppy Drive to a Modern Mac
The process of reading floppy disks on a Mac depends on which type of disk you want information technology to read. We'll go over each blazon in the following sections.
1.44 MB Mac Floppies
If you have 1.44 MB Mac floppies, a modern Mac running macOS ten.14 Mojave or earlier should be able to read them with a vintage, USB floppy drive.
Many people adopt the Imation SuperDisk LS-120 USB drive. It'due south a Cipher drive competitor that reads both its original, high-capacity floppies and regular, 1.44 MB floppies. Yous tin all the same find these for a reasonable price on eBay. Y'all can also utilise a vintage Sony or HP USB floppy drive.
If your automobile's running macOS x.15 or later, y'all're out of luck when information technology comes to native USB floppy support, though. Apple removed support for the Hierarchical File System (HFS) on vintage Mac floppies starting with Catalina. There might exist some technical piece of work-arounds, including restoring HFS support, but these are circuitous, and options are still emerging.
IBM PC iii.5-Inch Floppies
If you want your Mac to read IBM PC format three.5-inch floppies, you can use a vintage PC USB floppy drive. (Ironically, Catalina can nevertheless read the FAT12 file system used past vintage MS-DOS floppies, but not old Mac disks.)
We tried a Sony VAIO floppy drive with a 2013 iMac. It didn't have whatsoever problem reading the files on a high-density, 3.5-inch IBM PC format disk. You can probable detect a good Sony or HP USB floppy drive on eBay.
400 or 800 One thousand Mac Floppies
If you have 400 or 800 One thousand Mac floppies, things go much more complicated. The deejay drives that wrote these used special encoding called GCR. This technique isn't physically supported in most USB 3.five-inch floppy drives.
Recently, though, a new option called AppleSauce emerged for archiving 400/800 K Mac disks. It's a USB adapter that allows yous to connect vintage Apple 2 and Macintosh floppy drives to a modern Mac and read vintage floppies with incredible accuracy.
The biggest drawback is its price—the Deluxe version you lot need to read Mac floppies is $285. This is mostly because it's a complex, very low book hobbyist product. With this device and the advisable vintage drive, though, you lot can read your floppies into disk images that can exist used with emulators or extracted with other tools.
All Mac Floppy Disks
For all Mac Disks, your best bet might exist to find a vintage Mac desk-bound- or laptop with a 3.5-inch SuperDrive that can read and write 400/800 1000, and one.44 MB disks. Endeavour to locate a machine from the beige G3 era that even so shipped with floppies. The newer the ameliorate, because then you're less likely to take to make repairs to get it working.
From there you can use networking to re-create the files betwixt the vintage and modernistic Macs, merely that'southward another can of worms, entirely.
Information technology's Complicated, But There's Hope
When backing up old floppy disks, all the possible combinations of drives, systems, and formats comprise a circuitous variety of strategies that we tin can't possibly cover here.
Luckily, in that location are other resource if you lot require something more complex, like accessing an eight-inch floppy drive that contains CP/1000 files. Herb Johnson maintains an impressive site total of technical data on various floppy disk systems if you'd like to learn more than about how they work.
LowEndMac also has a wonderful guide to Mac floppy deejay formats. Good luck!
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/669331/how-to-read-a-floppy-disk-on-a-modern-pc-or-mac/
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