USB Floppy Drive

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Category: Laptop Hardware

Published on Monday, 23 September 2013 19:11

Written by Ben

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I got this piece of antique from my dad and yet as I'm typing these words he still doesn't have a clue where he found it. He just gave it to me and forgot about it and so was i when putting it in my closet without any excitement whatsoever…

As an early 90s kid I have to say that seeing this piece of old technology getting dumped is a bit sad but I guess that's the price of progress , but we must not forget our past.

It's 2013 and I do find myself use these disks now and then on old machines I have in my house or when going to a friend's house attempting to fix a malfunctioning computer. bottom line is - you can never know when you might need these old technology hardware,  not only for scavenging purposes but for actually using them as they were intended to.

So anyway  , I didn't except much when plugging it into my laptop. Externally the drive seemed undamaged and relatively new but yet I didn't it would actually work, and it did.

A few seconds after connecting it my Vista installation recognized the drive to be a TEAC floppy drive and not an IBM as labeled on the drive itself. A few more seconds and it was ready for use.

I inserted into the drive an old 1.44MB floppy disk out of a bunch of disks I still keep in reach just in case I would need to fix an old machine, and surprisingly all the files were read successfully.

I decided to conduct a copy\paste test and copied the files onto my desktop. Only about 60% of the files were successfully copied, then I remembered this specific disk was about 12 years old so the chances were great that the disk itself got damaged over the years.

I really don't know what to do with this drive. As a tech guy you gotta be ready for interaction with any interface but it has been a long time since I really needed a floppy to start up an operating system installation process or to recover a damaged one. But yet  , you can never know when  you might need some help from the past and therefor I decided to keep it in my backpack as a "standard issue" equipment accompanied with a floppy disk loaded with boot up files and one sealed backup floppy.

Lesson of the day - don't forget your past because you'll might need its help someday :)