Storage Depot External USB Floppy Drive - Black

It's still very useful to be able to read and write floppy discs. Not often I agree, but just occasionally. Since computer manufacturers have now very helpfully removed floppy drives from their products, this looked like it would be just the job for solving those very occasional 'backward compatibility' issues.My considerable experience with computers in the installation of both hardware and software, means I'm firmly in the 'that can't be right because it didn't take three hours (and also probably stop my web browser working)' camp.Imagine my surprise when I plugged the drive into my laptop (Windows XP, no inbuilt floppy) and it was recognised and worked immediately. What's more, it appeared as the A drive – exactly as a floppy is supposed to – rather than some more obscure drive letter, such as the same one as the DVD drive, causing a conflict.Emboldened by my success, I tried the floppy drive with my older desktop PC, which already has an A: drive, and runs Windows 2000. I was bordering on astounded when it was again recognised immediately, and installed as the second floppy drive B: without so much as a request for a driver disc.Now I can't guarantee your experience with this floppy drive will necessarily be as joyful and carefree as my own. But I was certainly mightily impressed, and copied the files I wanted within minutes, leaving me the rest of the three hours I'd mentally set aside to do something more worthwhile, like write this review among other things.So very good indeed, and almost top marks. Why not actually top marks, i.e five stars? Well, it's a floppy disc drive, and I'm afraid I just can't get quite that excited about it, particularly at my age.

1.44mb is a very small amount of data these days. Yet once the 1.44mb 3.5" "floppy" disk was the de facto standard for portable document files and the like. And for Operating System and Recovery disks. In fact, before hard drives grew in size and reliability (and shrunk in price) entire applications would arrive on one or a number of 1.44mb disks (and don't get me started on "true" floppies of 360k and 720k that went before!). I recall when a 20mb (yes Meg) hard drive was cutting edge!Now this disk format is obsolete, having been replaced firstly by CD/DVD writeable disks (still very useful for archiving) and USB Solid State memory sticks for portability - of vastly greater storage capability. So, understandably, it is some years since computers have been fitted with 1.44mb floppy drives.And then, suddenly you find a box of disks in the back of a cabinet and wonder what was on them. Or perhaps you know - a treasured photo perhaps? Either way, with a modern computer you're stuffed. You can't read them.So this little product is a cost effective method of retro proofing (for want of a better description) even the latest of machines. Even a laptop. If it has a USB port (and it's a rare machine that doesn't) then this should work. And unlike a fixed drive, you can move it between machines. With Windows machines - even Windows 7 - no additional software should be needed. And no external power supply. Just plug it in and it should be recognised as Drive A (the traditional floppy drive allocation was A and B, hence your hard drive is normally drive C). Pop in that disk that you found and away you go. The only problem you might encounter is that the software that the data on your disk was written under is also obsolete, but there's normally a way around that as well.For the money, it works well and is something of a bargain - if you have the need for it.

It worked straight from the box. I was dubious because the User Manual only listed operating systems up to Windows XP, and said there was supposed to be a CD-ROM for the driver, which there wasn't. However, I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium, and that seemed to provide a driver anyway. I was also dubious because my previous USB floppy drive (supplied with my Yamaha musical keyboard) didn't work on the Windows 7 PC although it had worked on a Vista PC. Apparently, as I glean from previous reviews for this product, earlier USB floppy drives didn't work on 64 bit systems, and this one had had to be upgraded. Well, it works.I'm using it to transfer my ancient floppies to a hard drive, my last PC with a floppy drive having died. Therefore I am copying whole floppies at a time rather than accessing individual files. The transfer rate, though, seems to be very slow as indicated by the transfer dialogue box, sometimes as slow as 4 kb/s and rarely higher than 30 kb/s. Perhaps there is some interaction with the McAfee virus checker, but I haven't investigated this yet. This is a one-off project as I don't expect to continue using the drive once I've transferred all my files, so I'm not too bothered about the speed.

Well what can I say; it does what it is meant to. For all those over the age of 15 know what a Floppy Disc is & it works well. Under windows 7 & 8 you will have to go to you drive list & double click to access your “A” drive but this is only a minor inconvenience. Reading a floppy disc is much slower that reading a USB flashdrive but needless to say, it works.Anyway, for all those under the age of 15 years of age this device allows you to write or read data to a 3.5 inch encased magnetic media device, (it’s a bit like a 3.5 inch square coffee cup coaster).So for all those who refuse to keep up with the latest trend in storage, this device is a great plug N play unit.

So its 2016 the time where floppy discs are a thing of the past and the youth of today think they are just models of the 'Save' button in many apps and then out of the blue you find the software that you need to reinstall is only on floppy disc wih no download available!Yes this is something that you'd probably use once in a bluemoon.This floppy has been brought kicking and screaming into the modern era and does come in a caddy with a USB interface, its simple plug and play (assuming you are running Windows Vista or higher) and has been used on Windows 7 and 8.1 machines.Just remember, floppy discs are slow - don't get impatient, its the past slowly working.