convert floppys to USB

If you have to format the floppy, then information is lost on the floppy, unless you use an extensive data recovery problem.

More than likely if the floppy isn't showing up in Disk Utility it is one of the following reasons:

• It has decayed beyond the ability to read anything.
• Notice below, the floppy on the left has a hole on the rear top of the floppy as being inserted into the drive.

This indicates the floppy is compatible with USB floppy drives. The HD logo on the top right front also indicates 1.4 MB is compatible.

The floppy on the right has no such gap in the right corner of the rear top of the floppy and is only compatible with Beige G3 and older Macs:

• The floppy was formatted for a different computer that the latest Mac OS does not read.
• Some floppies look the same, but have a CD like internal platter when you slide the metal plate to expose the platter. These are known as Magneto Optical floppies and will only work with the similar magneto optical drives that the floppy was made for. Imation made a series of floppy disks called Superdisk.

Hi,

Any information about when the floppies were made (and on which exact old Mac computer)? Are they HD (1.44 MB) or DD (400 or 800K) diskettes? This may be important in this case, since a USB floppy drive cannot handle the special Mac 400 or 800K format.

You may also want to have a look at the following article.

https://www.siber-sonic.com/mac/newmillfloppy.html

47rustylucy65 wrote:

I have a few floppy diskettes (3.5) i need to read on my 2013 iMac. floppy were created on an old mac. What do I have to do?

Whether you can get data off of these floppies will depend on their capacities and on their filesystems.

Capacity

Most Mac floppy disks will have a capacity of 400K, 800K, or 1.44 MB.

You can't read 400K and 800K floppy disks in USB floppy drives. Apple used a special IWM ("Integrated Woz Machine") controller to pack in 400K and 800K of data where DOS/Windows PCs only stored 360K and 720K, respectively. As far as I know, no floppy drives EXCEPT ones built into Macs, and external ones built by Apple specifically for Macs, can read these disks.

Filesystem

Even if you have a drive that can physically read a disk, the filesystem may present a problem.

Most 400K floppies used MFS, a filesystem that lacked subdirectories. (Folders were a Finder illusion.). I think Apple dropped all support for it as of (Classic) Mac OS 8.0.

Many used HFS (no "+"). Apple dropped all support for HFS (no "+") starting in macOS 10.15 (Catalina). That change has caused problems for people trying to read old Mac CDs and it would also be an issue for floppies.

With the 1.44 MB disks, I believe there was an option to format those using the same filesystem that PCs used.

Bottom line

You're only likely to be able to read old floppies (easily) if they are 1.44 MB floppies using DOS/Windows format.

I encountered a Church that had some old floppies that hadn't been touched in 20 years. Of the 20 floppies they gave me, only two were able to be read. And this was in 2018 with a USB floppy drive I bought in 1999. If you find the floppies are 400k or 800k with only one notch on one side, you'll need someone with a Beige PowerMac G3 or older that has a working floppy drive. PC floppies can be read with the application called File Exchange on those older Macs.

You need a compatible USB 3.5 in floppy disk reader and if those diskettes were formatted FAT32/exFAT, inserting them into the reader will cause the diskette to mount on the Desktop. Then you can copy the content to the other USB device. I have some floppies that used for project work back in 1997 that still mount and open on Sonoma.

If they are standard floppy disks, but made on a really old Mac like a PPC, then you would need a Mac running macOS 10.14 Mojave or earlier to read them.

Or those disks may have deteriorated over the years. I had that happen to a lot of floppy disks...even brand new ones still in the box.

Unfortunately it is complicated when there are so many possibilities for the issues in reading them.

47rustylucy65 wrote:

I have a few floppy diskettes (3.5) i need to read on my 2013 iMac. floppy were created on an old mac. What do I have to do?

I've read about services that may be able to do this for you. There used to be a company in, I think Florida that had all sorts of older equipment. Depending on how important the data is and how much you're willing to spend to try to recover it, there are probably folks out there who can attempt it for you.

Connecting the floppy drive to the Mac shows nothing on the Desktop, or in Disk Utility, until a compatibly formatted floppy disk is inserted and the operating system allows it to be mounted.