Floppy Disk Reader 3 5 inch 1 44mb External USB Type A C Floppy Disk Drive for PC

Works great. I was able to capture a lot of data, videos, and pictures stored on floppy drives from "back in the day". Read more

I have large collection of old 3.5" Disks going all the way back to my MS-DOS days in College. I bought this FDD to archive my data because at some point in the future it will just get more difficult. The first time I plugged this drive into my Windows 10 PC, stuck in an old data disk, I got the A:\ is not accessible, just like the many reviews before mine. However reading through the reviews I came across one that stated it worked with Linux but not their PC. Out came the old 2011 Mac Book Pro (High Sierra), guess what, it worked, and it was able to read the same dos data disk that Windows 10 had a hard time with. That got me thinking, is there an issue with the drive, a driver issue, or maybe something else. Time to work through some elimination and narrow down the issue. First, lets test this drive on multiple Windows 10 pc and see if this problem follows. Sure enough, it was not accessible with a Surface Pro, HP Envy Laptop, or my company workstation all running Windows 10. Back to my main Windows 10 PC, grabbed another old disk, again not accessible by the drive, and lets format it! Sure enough after formatting this disk, it was readable. Copied a small txt file to it and it was readable on the MacBook, Surface Pro, HP Envy, and my company PC. Is this an issue with the Windows 10 driver reading old disks or is it an issue with the disk? Out came the disk collection, I went through the stack and started with my OEM Microsoft disk and the newer ones were readable (Windows 98, 95 & 3.11, and MSDOS 6.22) however the older ones (MS-DOS 3.3, Windows 3.0) were not accessible in Windows 10, but all could be accessed with the MacBook. This looks like a disk format issue and the Windows 10 driver. So reading through the the little Trouble Shooting guide that came with the FDD, sure enough on page 5 is the answer. "this problem occurs on disks that do not contain a media descriptor byte in the BIOS parameter block (BPB) of the boot sector. Some older preformatted floppy disks do not contain a media descriptor byte". Bingo - it's the Windows 10 driver needing this media descriptor byte which some older disk don't have. If you have an old floppy disk with known data on it that gives you the "A:\ is not accessible", odds are the disk and/or the FDD is not bad, it's an old disk missing the media descriptor byte on the boot section most likely preformatted before the MSDOS 6.0 era. I was able to backtrack a possible solution from Microsoft using Dskprobe.exe to modify the boot sector. However it looks like the last time it was included with Windows was back on XP. I don't have the hardware available, but I am interested if this issue is limited to Windows 10 or if there's an older version of Windows (8, Vista, 7, XP, 98) that would be able to read a disk without the media descriptor. Hope this helps anyone that runs into the same. Read more

It works. I did have to unplug it after reading each disk to "reset" the drive. Small inconvenience, but it is nice to get data off of my stack of 3.5" disks! Read more

The first one sent did not work. I waited too long to try using it (life got in the way). So I emailed Michael at the email address provided in the documentation and I got a reply back right away. After trying the troubleshooting he suggested, the unit still didn't work. Within a week I had another unit, even though the returns period for the unit had long expired. The new one worked fine. So... they stand behind their product, so I would highly recommend it. But keep in mind... your floppy disks will degrade over time. Only 2 of the 12 I had to convert were still readable. So, if yours are >25 years old like mine were, likely you won't get any data off of them. For the price, it is still worth it to at least try! Read more

This has to be one of the worst-designed products I have ever encountered. I don't mind "cheaply made." I tend to be gentle with things, but in the case of this USB floppy drive, it didn't matter. I used this thing for literally 5 minutes before it made a crunch sound as I inserted another floppy. Now, again, I am very gentle with my tech—especially things like this that I know are sensitive and cheaply made. I did not shove. I did not force. I inserted the floppy at a straight angle. However, inside, there was a piece that decided it was going to get caught under the floppy and when I inserted it, it bent. This is a design flaw. There was no way for me to have known that the floppy was above this little piece of metal. I opened the drive and assessed the situation. I was not able to bend the little copper piece back. I decided it was likely a lost cause, so I just went for it and removed the little bent piece. And to my surprise... it started working again. For about an hour. As I was removing a floppy (by the way, the eject button is horribly situated, such that you can barely get your finger out of the way when pressing it, resulting in the floppy hitting your hand and not always ejecting or exiting the device properly)... ANYWAY, as I was removing a floppy later that same day, I heard ANOTHER crunch as the floppy came out. This was the end of my experience with this product. It would no longer read anything and disks were not going in or out properly. I tried a few basic things but ultimately decided that this device was more of a risk to my precious floppies than it was worth trying to save. I threw it in the trash. TL;DR: If you buy this drive, be EXTREMELY careful with it when inserting and removing floppies. (This will be hard to do because it isn't built like old-school floppy drives; there is too much bending and flexion.) But best of luck if you decide to risk it. Maybe I just got a lemon, but I don't think so... Everything about this device feels poorly designed. Read more

Great customer service and easy to use product Read more