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What is the best type and brand, and where do I get it? I need to transfer information created on older Macs which is all on 3.5" floppy disks. Thanks.
Power Mac G4, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Hard Drive 500 GB, External Backup 500 GB, Video HD 60 GB
If you need just a short run and not looking for longevity my guess is price would be your guide! Sabrent makes some drives in the under 20 range. Do I search of
Sabrent SBT-UFDB USB External 3.5-Inch 1.44 MB 2x Floppy Disk Drive (Black)
If you need just a short run and not looking for longevity my guess is price would be your guide! Sabrent makes some drives in the under 20 range. Do I search of
Sabrent SBT-UFDB USB External 3.5-Inch 1.44 MB 2x Floppy Disk Drive (Black)
Thanks. Is a powered drive more reliable than one which just runs off a port?
Absolutely, never buy a Bus Powered device if you can avoid it, macs are worse in this respect than PCs.
You raised this same question/topic back in January (here), when you had no luck getting any response/activity from an Imation USB floppy drive connected to your G4. Because it was speculated that your G4 didn't have enough power to run the bus-powered Imation FDD, you were advised to purchase a powered USB hub, into which the FDD could be connected. To further complicate matters, you added "Some may be 400K disks but I think most are 800K DS/DD disks." Grant pointed out that only Apple's (variable-speed motor) "SuperDrive" FDD was able to read/write 800K with DS-DD floppies. This rules out the use of any USB floppy drive on the market today, because they're only compatible with 720K or 1.44 MB disks. A Sabrent floppy drive isn't going to be any more capable than the Imation that you have tried. For reading the 800K disks, you would be better off looking for a used PCI Power Mac (7300, 7500, 8500, 7600, 8600, 9500, 9600) for the purpose of transferring your files. As to what you'd transfer the files, a USB PCI card and a USB flash drive would be a solution, but the Power Mac would need to be running OS 8.6 minimally. As for reading the 400K floppies, Grant pointed out that you'd need to be running an OS version older than 8.0, which - on a PCI Power Mac - would mean 7.5x/7.6/7.6.1. The problem with that is that a USB PCI card isn't supported under OS 7.x, so the flash drive wouldn't be an option. You may want to check for any Mac User Groups in your area that might have the hardware to help you accomplish your desired goal.
Geat detective work & post Jeff, thanks! 🙂
Absolutely, Jeff, thanks! You saved me a world of pain, heartbreak, and frustration which would have resulted from buying a powered drive that would work on my Mac only to learn it WOULDN'T READ MY DISKS! I will get right to work on this. I don't suppose eBay would be of any use?
The problem with buying an older Power Mac at eBay is the expense of the shipping - and those old Macs were built well, which made them heavy. Even if the seller were reasonably close to your location, the cost of packing it carefully and shipping a short distance won't be inexpensive. You'd end up paying more to ship the computer than its selling price. Are there any thrift stores in your area that sell donated computers or a computer recycling retailer? The kind of Power Mac that you're looking for is often dropped off for recycling, because there isn't enough demand for most people to bother advertising for sale. In addition to the Power Mac, you need to choose the media to which you can transfer your files. An older PCI Power Mac has an external DB-25 SCSI port, while your G4 has USB ports. Perhaps a pair of Zip drives would work for you - one for the SCSI interface on the PCI Power Mac and the other one for a USB port on the G4. You could probably find the Zip drives at eBay, but before buying you'd want to find a source for the Zip disks. Both the SCSI and the USB Zip drives came in a 100 MB or 250 MB version (a latter 750 MB version is USB-only), so you'd want to buy the same capacity for each type of drive. A 250 MB Zip drive can read/write 100 MB disks as well. Be advised that heavily-used Zip drives can develop a problem ("Click Death"), that can render them useless, so this is something to consider before buying/using Zip drives. Given the multiple hardware requirements for your intended purpose of reading 400K and 800K disks, I'd still recommend that you look into a Mac User Group that may be able to help you, so you can avoid spending $$ on devices that you'll only need temporarily.
Well, that's already happened. I already bought two old Macs and a floppy drive. At least one of the Macs was free and I got some trade value for the other. The free one is actually invaluable as my original seems to have died and the Macintosh SE/30 is the only way I can even view my data. The floppy drive, I never even got to work and now turns out wouldn't have done what I wanted anyway. So naturally I have to ponder my next move.
Cornelia,
Do not forget the external SCSI port. If you can gut a CD-ROM drive and drop in an old SCSI hard drive, you can transfer files to the external drive, move the files to a G3 with an IDE drive and then move to a more modern machine. Jeff offered a similar approach with a SCSI Zip drive.
User Groups are becoming the best way to find old resources at an affordable price.
Ji~m
What is the best floppy drive to use with a G4?
