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Level 1

9 points

USB external floppy disk drives

This question went unanswered in the Leopard discussion, and Apple Support web page doesn't seem to give me any option to contact them. Sad state for Apple, if true. (Nobody understands customer support anymore, anyway. 😟 )

I recently purchased a Diablotek slimline USB external floppy disk drive. It's a Teac unit, FD-05PUB. I bought it for use with a Windows 7 netbook, and it does work fine there and under Vista.

I'm trying to get info from Teac about the unit, but so far, no go there either. 😟 The unit is still listed on their website.

I would like to know if the drive should be recognized on my iMac with 10.5.8. I don't want to read Mac formatted floppies from OS 9.X and earlier. I have Parallels Desktop installed on the iMac, and would like to use the floppy drive with the guest operating systems I've installed using Parallels.

Thanks.

iMac - Intel based, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 4 GB RAM, 1 TB hard drive

Posted on Oct 13, 2010 8:16 AM

35 replies

mrtotes

Level 6

11,836 points

Oct 29, 2010 12:25 PM in response to snowshed

Hello,

(I've been away over in Ireland getting fleeced for pints of a well-known Irish Stout!)

My thoughts are that there's a chance that if you used the standard upgrade method for OS X it could bring the problem over with the update if it's something 3rd party - do you have much installed? of course it could cure the issue.

I'd recommend getting an external drive at least as large as the internal (Firewire 800 is much faster for daily use than USB2.0, but the latter is fine for occasional backups) and then use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the internal drive to the external. Whilst it takes a little while this is good in terms of you knowing that you have exactly everything backed up. Being the paranoid sort I'd recommend a second full backup - personally I have a second clone with the in-laws and a Time Capsule in the garage too. I always boot into the clone immediately after and check it looks identical (with a clone even the icons will be in the same place on the desktop and the recent menu items listed et cetra so it's hard to differentiate except that "Macintosh HD" won't be in the top left - I usually change the desktop pattern of a clone to the date/time it was taken so it's more visible.)

You can then "Upgrade" OS X. If the issue persists perhaps try an "Archive and Install" with "preserve users". At any stage you can boot from the external drive and clone the drive back to recover everything.

My other thought is to return to the experts in the OS X forums at this stage with a little more understanding of where the issue isn't (i.e. not hardware!) and see if they can offer any typical USB drive troubleshooting tips.

regards

mrtotes

snowshed Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 29, 2010 12:47 PM in response to mrtotes

mrtotes wrote:

My thoughts are that there's a chance that if you used the standard upgrade method for OS X it could bring the problem over with the update if it's something 3rd party - do you have much installed? of course it could cure the issue.

I had the same thoughts long ago in this process. Simply upgrading may not solve the problem.

I'd recommend getting an external drive at least as large as the internal (Firewire 800 is much faster for daily use than USB2.0, but the latter is fine for occasional backups)

I'm going to use USB 2.0 because, for other purposes, I need to attach the drive to Windows computers that likely will not have a Firewire port.

At the moment, I'd get at least a terabyte drive, and probably a refurbished one since it won't be used on even a weekly basis.

I've got a couple IDE drives here, sitting on the shelf, that I thought I might use via a USB to IDE adapter, but none of them are large enough.

I don't have enough data, or important enough data, to bother with multiple back ups. One should do me just fine. And, I keep all my data in a single Data folder located in the root directory. So, for additional backups, I could simply copy the Data folder to another drive/partition, and at least have the data protected.

My other thought is to return to the experts in the OS X forums at this stage with a little more understanding of where the issue isn't (i.e. not hardware!) and see if they can offer any typical USB drive troubleshooting tips.

Good idea, but for now that has to go to the bottom of the to do list. 🙂

normando

Level 1

5 points

Nov 15, 2010 9:13 AM in response to snowshed

Hi there,

I'm hoping that you will find a solution for this. I, too, am trying to get a TEAC FD05-PUB to work on an Intel iMac with OS 10.5.8. I've tried it on my Ti PBG4 with OS 10.4.11 and got nothing.

On the iMac, using the primary USB port on the back of the monitor, I did get the light to come on the TEAC, but it has not read any floppies yet.

If upgrading to Snow Leopard solves this I suppose I'll have to go there, but I'm always leery of system upgrades since they always seem to lead to other issues and I end up wasting more time fixing them instead of working.

Anyway, I hope you guys are still working on this problem.

Thanks.

snowshed Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 20, 2010 12:02 AM in response to normando

Hi, Normando,

I'm sorry for the late reply to your post, I never got an email that told me you had left a message. And for that matter, a week ago when I tried to log in to make this post, the site wouldn't let me in. Wanted me to answer 3 security questions. But, I was never ever asked to answer any security questions when I registered year and years ago, so the questions I was supposed to answer were blank. @^^)_+})O^%U#@@RSI&L&T(I

It appears there is some kind of incompatibility between Leopard and this particular floppy drive.

Out of curiosity, after you've plugged the drive into your Mac's, making sure there's a good floppy inserted, open System Profiler and see if the drive is listed on the USB ports. Every 10.5.8 system I've tried shows the drive there, but it doesn't appear on the desktop.

There is a local Apple reseller that has been around longer than the local Apple Store. Per the suggestion of one of the reseller's employees at a meeting of the local user group, I took the floppy drive with a known good floppy to the reseller's store. The reseller is an authorized service center for everything Apple.

The drive did not work there, either. I don't remember if the computers were all Intel based or not. But, they did have a different brand of floppy drive hooked up to a Mac with Leopard. That drive read the floppy fine, it came up on the desktop just like it should.

Since Teac has been making this unit for some time, i.e. before OS X even came out, I still believe the problem is in Leopard.

I haven't bought an external storage device as of yet. I can't settle on price, size, or type, meaning USB or an NAS unit.

So, I split my 1 TB internal HD into two partitions, and set up Time Machine to back up to the second partition. After a few days of that, I installed Snow Leopard.

And now, the floppy disk comes up on the desktop just fine.

Snow Leopard's only $30 at the Apple Store. Not a lot of money to spend.

snowshed Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 20, 2010 12:05 AM in response to snowshed

There was no solution, on the conclusion that Leopard has a problem with this particular floppy disk drive.

USB external floppy disk drives