#Usb floppy format tool mac mac
So ya say ya gotta Mac with a built-in SuperDrive that is allegedly able to handle 400k, 800k, and 1.4 MB disks, and it does work with 800k DS and 1.4 MB HD disks, yet not with 400k SS disks? Well, you need more than the drive… you need the correct Mac software. Unless you can find an external USB drive that specifically claims to support Mac 800k disks (i really doubt you will find one that supports 400k), you will almost certainly need to find an older Mac with a built-in floppy drive to access your data on DS and SS disks.
(I don’t have/could not easily make a 360k floppy to test this theory.) My guess would be that they could read 360k SS floppies from other systems. They’ll likely also read 720k DS floppies. This is fact: With 1.4 MB HD floppies, Apple agreed that fixed-speed drive was what they would use.īottom line: a generic fixed-speed external USB floppy drive will work with 1.4 MB HD floppies, yet (to the best of my knowledge, and i may be wrong) not Mac 800k or 400k floppies. It was a whole lot easier and more financially sane for Apple to go with the flow and use the same standards for 1.4 MB floppies as the Wintel world… economies of scale, dontcha know! This is all my conjecture, anyway. As the Wintel juggernaut began to steamroll them, Apple sought ways to cut costs. While there were many reasons for this, one was Apple’s penchant to innovate and improve upon the standards. One of many, many causes was the higher price of Macintosh computers. That is why Mac floppy drives make sounds of different audible pitches as they move around the disk surface: the motor speed is changing! Īs of the emergence of high-density (HD) floppies in the early 1990s, Apple was growing weary of being slammed around in the marketplace. How did Apple do this? By using a variable-speed spindle drive system instead of fixed-speed, to cram more data on the same magnetic material space. Similarly, double-side double-density (DSDD or for our purposes DS) 3.5" floppies hold 720k on a Wintel, and 800k on a Mac. You may have noticed (or not) that long ago, when floppies were common, the original 3.5" single-side double-density (SSDD or for our purposes SS) hard-case floppies held something like 270k or 360k on PC-compatible computers (if they even used those… i didn’t and don’t know) while the same floppy formatted and used on a Mac held 400k. What is Not well-known is that these drives, being more generic, lack a crucial feature of Apple-specific floppy drives: Variable Speed. All the ones i have seen connect via USB. Below are the most common scenarios: 400k and/or 800k Floppies with an External USB Floppy DriveĪs is well documented, modern Macs from this millennium (and some before) no longer come with built-in floppy drives. “Hey! I’ve got a floppy drive on my Mac, and it reads some floppies just fine, yet not others. This page attempts to address methods and workarounds for accessing data on Macintosh floppy disks (using Apple Macintosh and clone hardware) and moving the desired data to newer Mac systems. Working with Macintosh Floppy Disks in the New MillenniumĪs time passes and floppy disks become relics of computing’s past (especially in the Macintosh world), folks seem to be confronting more problems accessing information stored on this older format.
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