CSL – Portable External Disk Drive – FDD – USB 3.0 for PC Laptop - Plug Play – 1.44 MB – Backup – BIOS updates – RAID driver - MIDI - 3.5“ USB External Floppy Disk Drive

I had low expectations of this as had previous purchased an alternative product which did not work, although ironically the other model included better instructions on how to work with a floppy disk drive. It is worth researching these basics before you use. That being said, I am delighted to say this one worked perfectly. I was able to access and copy all files from about 10 different and fairly old diskettes. Worth spending the extra.

Worked fine, straight out of the box. It's worth knowing that external drives like this don't register with Windows Disc Management, so file recovery software won't work with them. For general read / write functions they're fine. Some of these drives recommend that you plug into a USB port at the back of the PC (directly into the backplane) rather than plugging into the front, because of power requirements. I found no problem with either front or back USB ports. The default driver in Windows will handle the drive, although a specific driver is available online.

I previously gave this device 3 out of 5(see below), subsequently the suppler contacted me and sent me a replacement. this worked perfectly. Couple of points to remember, it won't read 720K floppy disks, whe you eject the disk and insert a new one you need to click on the floppy drive to refresh the explrer window. Other than that this one works perfectly. - the previous drive must have been faulty "Connected to the PC (Win 10) ok, and appeared as drive a: Out of 10 floppy disks read three of them, and I could transfer files, however when you managed to get the disk out (Yes it needs pair of tweezers) and inset the next one it doesn't read it. Refresh doesn't work, you have to unplug the drive and then reconnect to get it to recognise that a new disk has been inserted"

Although it's a nice and compact device, I was concerned about the build quality when the door wouldn't shut properly. It seemed to catch on the LED, so I had to use a floppy disk to push the door up as I removed it to try and get the door to shut fully. However, none of that mattered when I plugged the drive into my computer and stuck a floppy disk in it. Not only did it make a noise similar to a thirty year old Betamax machine, but most importantly, the disks weren't being recognised by the computer. Tried it in a hub as well as a direct connection and it behaved exactly the same. Back to Amazon it's going, I'm afraid. I could say this is just an odd one out from a healthy batch of drives, but I've used CSL things before with significantly disappointing results.

Based on other reviews I wasn't certain that this would work with my Mac, but it has performed without trouble (I used a MacBook Pro 17" running OSX Yosemite 10.10.1. The drive appears well made and has a good clean white appearance. No instructions are included for Macs so here is what I did - pretty intuitive but may help others. 1) Connect drive to a USB port (I found it worked fine running through a hub, but if connect to a USB port on the computer if you are having problems). No further installation is required. 2) Insert a disk into the drive. 3) The drive will spin up, mount the disk and read contents, a disk drive icon will appear on your desktop and will show as a new drive on your finder under DEVCES probably as 'NONAME'. 4) Select this drive and you should see the files on the disk - access the files as any other drive. The disk will probably keep spinning and whirring all the time you have the drive mounted. 5) Unmount / Eject the disk in Finder (or drag the icon on the desktop to the trash) BEFORE physically ejecting the disk from the drive. The drive is rather noisy when in use, and seems to keep the disk spinning all the while the disk is inserted. When a disk isn't in the drive it 'chirps' every couple of seconds, so I unplug it when I have finished.

For around £10 this has proved a practical buy. It is simply a drive in a plastic case that works as it should via usb and that is exactly what I was after. The plastic casing is solid and appears durable and disks load and eject (manually) without issue. I have used to read old 1.44 MB PC formatted disks and retrieved archived files without any problem. Also used on an old Imac G3 with similar disks. The unit powers down (disk stops spinning unnecessarily) when used with my Windows 10 PC which is good. But on the Apple the floppy needs to be ejected to stop spinning. Different operating systems having different ways of working no doubt. Be aware that It will not read/write disks formatted with the older Apple (beige-coloured Macintosh) 800 and 400 variable speed drives. This is not a criticism as these were very much of their time and reflected Apple's own original approach to floppy management (which they later abandoned in favour of the 1.44 format). So for the task of retrieving archived files in both PC and the newer Macs it has really impressed.

This worked with both XP and Win-11 PCs. The only issue was that the drive continually started and stopped even when no floppy was loaded. This issue also applies to the similar internal floppy drive as they both have the same/similar circuit board.

I bought this as I have 100's of floppy disks that contain photographs, as is the way of the world, Technology has deemed the 3.5" floppy disk to be redundant. Advertised as being compatible with Windows 10, I thought that this was the one for me. A slight hitch as I couldn't get my pc to recognise the device. However I kept trying, finally going through "Settings, Devices and Devices and Printers I found it and was on my way. The reason for relating the story is that following my early failure in locating the disk drive, I contacted the seller via Amazon who immediately offered me a replacement or refund, none of which are needed. As now I know where to look, it works every time. So far I've recovered over 100 of cherished photos. If you want a floppy drive, buy this one now.