3.5 Floppy Disk Reader, Portable 1.44 MB USB Floppy Drive for mac

It was only recognized by the USB 3.0 (Win 10). But it read my old floppies like a charm. Works great.

What I wanted was for a simple way to get data from about 25 3.5" 1.44MB diskettes onto a more modern format such as hard disk or SSD. I no longer had any PC's with a native floppy disk drive. Looking around for a way to connect a 1.44MB floppy drive to a modern Win10 or Win11 PC resulted in devices such as this one I purchased. However the reviews were less than spectacular for these types of products with about 10% to15% 1 star reviews. My experience with this particular 3.5" floppy drive to USB was great. Plugging it into either the USB-A or the USB-C connector into the PC resulted with it being identified in a few seconds as drive A: without requiring any drivers or any configuration on my part. Every one of my floppy disks was read into the PC with no errors (floppies were stored in a cool dry environment for 25 years). Reviews of some of these products indicated that they required to be unplugged every time the diskette was changed but I think those comments while correct are not necessary. After copying a floppy, ejecting it, and inserting a new floppy does NOT cause the PC to re-read the file directory info from the diskette. It was necessary to just click on the A: drive icon to cause the PC to read the directory of the floppy. Then it could be copied to the hard disk without unplugging and plugging it back in. The experience was as good as could be expected!

Functioned best using the USB connector on the display port adapter

I successfully used this to get old photos off floppies from Seattle Film Works from 1996. I used it with my M4 Macbook Pro running macOS Sequoia and did not require any drivers or other software to read the floppies. I then used ImageMagick to convert them from SFW to PNG format. These are Windows-formatted (FAT) floppies, not old Mac ones.

I did not have any success plugging this device into my Mac.

Mixed feelings about this one. MOST of the time it transfers the files from 3.5" floppy to the Mac without any issues. However about 1 out of every 4 uses, the drive freezes up and can only be restarted by unplugging and then plugging back in. this just slows down the process and causes aggravation.

The floppy disk drive came in mint condition and worked with the 3.5 floppy disks I used at school. The floppy drive allowed me access my old school work.

I bought this to play some old 3.5 inch floppy disks that were found in a box. so when it arrived, I inserted each floppy disc and it turns out there were dozens of old family photographs on them from at least 15 years ago. Many Of the photographs had my Dad in them - and he died in 2010. Brought tears to my eyes. The discovery of these cherished pictures of my Dad made the value of this external floppy drive worth its weight in gold!