Questions tagged [floppy]

The floppy disk is an obsolescent magnetic storage medium.

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Best way to back up an old, probably linux formatted 3.5" boot floppy in 2023?

At work we have a very expensive (and older) piece of scientific equipment that for some reason refuses to boot without a floppy disk in it. The tech has advised me the manufacturer probably doesn't ...
Canageek-Work Account's user avatar
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How come IMGMOUNT works in DOSBox, but displays "cannot create drive from file" in DOSBox variants like DOSBox-X?

There's a certain file image which can be instantly mounted in DOSBox as a floppy disk, but fails to do so in newer variants like DOSBox-X, any idea how to fix it (a bug was already submitted but both ...
LWC's user avatar
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What do these old floppy disk standards mean: DMF and DSED/HD?

I see on floppy some "standards" called SSSD, or DSSD. Some of them are known for me some other not. Standard Definition DMF #? DSDD #Double Sided Double Density DSED #Double Sided ? ...
elbarna's user avatar
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5 answers
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How do I back up a boot floppy from a Philips P3120?

I have an old PHILIPS P3120 that runs a custom operating system (DOS type) from a floppy drive. I wanted to make a backup, so I found a Windows 7 PC with a floppy drive and I copied the files from ...
Dimitris's user avatar
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Making a DOS 6.22 Network Boot Floppy from a Hard Drive

I have a computer (an oooold ALR, 486DX-66) that has a hard drive that boots to DOS 6.22. This ALR computer boots to DOS, loads network drivers (it has an old Dlink DE-220 network card). It then maps ...
TBone's user avatar
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DVD-RW and 3.5 inch Floppy Drive recognized in BIOS. Neither can be read

The bios recognizes both the 3.5 inch Floppy and the DVD-RW, but as I try to boot from the DVD drive, it tries and fails to read any disk. I installed FreeDOS onto a SATA HDD to test drive function. ...
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1 answer
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Extract files from Windows floppy writer exe

I have some files that are PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows, according to file, and only want me to "insert a floppy" when run. Is there some way to extract the files from ...
Tomas By's user avatar
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1 answer
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Gimp file and settings dialogues open extremely slow under Windows

It was pestering me for years that even though I have a pretty fast PC with SSD that every file dialogues (Open..., Save as..., Export as...) are brutally slow in Gimp. The Edit \ Settings dialogue ...
bardosd's user avatar
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can i connect a Floppy Drive to USB Adapter / copy data, can i emulate a floppy drive and rip?

can i connect a 1.44MB 3.5" Floppy Drive Connector 34 PIN 34P to USB Adapter to somethign and copy the data, *(rather than connecting a floppy drive and copying to floopy and then transferign it ...
vince's user avatar
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Device ID for floppy disk controller and floppy disk drives

I noticed that some of the older computer (bought years ago) has a floppy disk controller and floppy disk drive device ID detected. The respective device ID detected were: Floppy disk drive: ACPI\...
pikachu's user avatar
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Is it possible to boot a floppy disk driven operating system using a usb device

I am very enthusiast about operating systems and I am following a course related. So as a project I was assigned to implement a simple operating system. They provided me the simple operating system ...
Neminda Prabhashwara's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
771 views

What's the difference between sector interleave and sector skew, and are both ever used on the same disk?

In reading about the geometries and layouts of different disks and filesystems in various OSes, or at least floppies from the late '70s through the mid '90s where I was focusing, I noticed the terms &...
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In reference to disks "allocation unit", "block", and "cluster" synonyms?

In the context of spinning disk media such as floppy and hard disks, do these terms all refer to the same underlying concept, differing only by which term is used by which platform? allocation unit ...
hippietrail's user avatar
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Can you partition a floppy disk?

I read somewhere that floppy disks cannot be partitioned with most modern computer software tools. However, can't a floppy disk simply be viewed as an array of bytes like other magnetic storage ...
Matthew Inbox's user avatar
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USB Floppy Drive does not stop running and Windows 7 showes stuff, that should not be on the disc

My problem is a tough one. I have a USB Floppy Drive (I can plug my floppy drive via USB into my Computer (Win7)), which should read the floppy discs correctly, but sometimes, wenn I press on that ...
The A's user avatar
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How to boot and read a Windows 9X boot CD from a 2TB SCSI/NVMe SSD?

First I want to apologize that I thought it was SCSI, that's what the Device manager details told me. I tried to boot both a Windows 98 SE and a (patched) Windows ME Boot Disk equipped SSD, and it ...
Ciel Ruby's user avatar
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1 answer
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How to disable USB floppy disk caching on Windows 10?

A few seconds after connecting a USB floppy disk drive to a Windows 10 computer, the whole disk is read to cache (making every file readable without additional physical reading). Is it possible to ...
Pedro Palhoto's user avatar
1 vote
3 answers
740 views

How to get Win 9X OEMSetup working from same C:\ USB stick as the Boot Disk

Edit: The big problem with either 95 or ME probably is that the boot cd(stick) IS the primary partition and there's no way to spoof it as a floppy or CD. such a pain that the dos files are in the way ...
Ciel Ruby's user avatar
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Why fdisk adds half kibibyte sometimes?

I'm trying to partition a 1440 KiB floppy disk image using fdisk (util-linux, v2.31.1). However, the tool is seemingly adding a 512-byte sector, no matter what units I use, and I can't tell why. ...
NiNEngine's user avatar
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5.25 Through Parallel Through USB

I have managed to find an old external parallel 5.25" Drive, I have connected this up with a USB to Parallel cable. The cable is detected fine in Linux. I could spend hours browsing the web and or ...
AnonymousPenguin's user avatar
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1 answer
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USB Flash Drive shows 0 byte of 1.38 and nothing is in the USB drive

My flash drive become empty and shows empty, yas, nothing. yesterday it worked fine but now it shows like a floppy and shows "0 bytes free of 1.38 MB" and "This folder is empty." my laptop still ...
URGENT's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
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Maxiumum recovery of data from old floppy discs with padded bad sectors and multiple passes

I've a collection of old 3.5" floppy disks that I'm looking to recover as much data as possible from. The issue is due to the structure of some of the files, I need the length of all the files to ...
Montecristo's user avatar
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Windows 10 reporting 'parameter is incorrect' with USB internal floppy drive

I purchased a Sony internal 3.5 inch floppy drive (34 pin internally FDD interface). I also got a BYTECC BT-146 reader with its FDD connector. The goal was to connect both via one of the cheap 34 pin ...
Eric's user avatar
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1 answer
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Reading old floppy disks / Fujitsu UF0002 Rev A USB drive?

Trying to pull some old data off of floppies, but having no luck. I only have a couple of Windows 10 and a Mac OS X computer available at the moment. I do have 2 of these Fujitsu UF0002 USB 3.5" ...
Brian Knoblauch's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
3k views

Floppy drive for both 3.5 and 5.25 [closed]

The title is the question, I want to know if there is a floppy drive that can take, read, and write to both a 5.25 and 3.5 floppy disks.
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Create a bootable virtual floppy disk image on linux, from a binary file

I am trying to create a bootable floppy disk image (.img) for a very old version of Debian. I hope to run it on virtual-box. i have succeeded in creating a .img and mounting it on /media/floppy as a ...
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2 votes
0 answers
141 views

Cracking ZIP password from spanned volume

On October 10, 1997, I tried to free up some space on my hard-drive by off-loading them to floppy disks. I tried to reduce the number of disks required by using PKZIP to compress them. For some reason,...
Synetech's user avatar
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Windows 7 fails to see Super Disk drive

Windows 7 x64 fails to see my internal IDE Super Disk drive, but Lubuntu 18.04 x64 does see it. I know it's not the IDE interface or cable that's the problem because it will detect a slave IDE HDD ...
Alexander M's user avatar
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Why does Virtual Box VMs add a Floppy Drive by default

Whenever I create a new VM, a floppy drive is added by default. I don't think I've ever needed to use a virtual floppy drive. Seeing that there have been hypervisor vulnerabilities that exploit ...
JuanKB1024's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
20k views

How to use virtual floppy drive on windows 10 64 bit?

I want to install images of 1.44 floppy disks. These images come with a program called vfd. The install with vfd.exe install works fine. The required vfd.exe starts aborts with the message ...
nilo de roock's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
3k views

imgmount in dosbox says "can't create drive from file" to .img created with dd

Background: I want to backup old floppy disks (as images) and then be able to mount them in dosbox later. What I did: I'm running Linux Mint. I add an external 3,5" floppy drive (USB) I dump an ...
SanSaurus's user avatar
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1 answer
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How to Reformat a Floppy disk originally formatted under Linux? [closed]

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit. I have tried reformatting the disk through both the GUI and CMD, and have had no luck with either. Both times, I get an error that basically says it cannot ...
QueueBot's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
7k views

Error 0x800706F9 when trying to copy files off floppy disk

I have some old files on 3.5" floppy disks (probably written on Windows 2000 or XP) that I need to copy over to my Windows 10 hard drive. Some of the files are MS Office documents, some pictures, and ...
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2 votes
1 answer
3k views

How to(Libvirt) attach floppy image device to guest VM?

Say, I have floppy.vfd image. How should I fill my xml file in order to attach floppy image? I have template like <disk type='*' device='*'> <device name='*' type='*'/> <...
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2 votes
3 answers
4k views

Floppy Drive Power Input

I would like to power a floppy drive without using a PSU out of a computer, and power it off something like batteries or a bench power supply, I know that the red wire is 5v and the black is ground ...
TheMelonKing 's user avatar
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1 answer
920 views

Format a floppy disk image

I have a machine with a floppy drive, from which it loads its 'Master', basically it's OS, every-time the machine restarts. I have more than one type, and the one I use most frequently has died. I ...
Orpheus Feal's user avatar
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0 answers
630 views

Converting Hard Drive from FDD to HDD mode without loss data

My hard drive cannot be partitioned. In DiskGenius my disk is shown as FDD (floppy disk). Is there a method to convert FDD mode to HDD mode without loss of partitions and data? DiskGenius has such ...
Greck's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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What is Windowsoft?

I found an old floppy disc for Windows Forms Maker and on it it says the software requires "Microsoft® Windowsoft™ 3.1 and up." Was this just a typo, or is "Microsoft Windowsoft" a thing? It says it ...
Guy's user avatar
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2 votes
4 answers
4k views

Can't open USB floppy drive

I have bought USB Floppy Drive but unable to use it. Windows says The reason why I think it may be programmatic reason, is that antivirus can test this disk and report number of files tested. ...
Dims's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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Floppy disk makes noise when refreshing my computer

When I refresh my computer, or each time I navigate from local disks back to my computer, my floppy disk driver makes a loud noise, and its green led blinks. I'd like to stop it from making noise, ...
Omid1989's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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How to clone a floppy boot disk to a hard drive and make it bootable?

I'm trying to preserve some old bootable floppy disk by trying to clone it to a hard drive (disk C:) to run on the same hardware. (Important note: The hardware shall remain the same. I cannot use a VM ...
c00000fd's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
440 views

Does the media of 3 1/2 DD floppies have to be physically different from HD media?

Back in the olden days, like 1995, classmates used to buy cheaper DD floppies and drill holes into them to use them as HD floppies (the 3 1/2 floppy had a hole in one of the corners to allow the drive ...
Veredomon's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
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Floppy Disk to ??? Controller

I have a motherboard which has: SATA IDE Internal USB headers I need to attach a floppy disk drive, but there is no onboard floppy disk controller. I've looked for the following: Internal USB ...
Matthew Layton's user avatar
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0 answers
2k views

How to Fix Virtual Floppy Drive Windows 7 64bit

I am following the OSDev tutorial over at brokenthorn, and a part of it is creating a virtual floppy drive using vfdwin.exe. I downloaded it from the sourceforge page, and while there is another ...
Zuve's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
225 views

How could I turn a floppy disk into a smartcard?

I'm a fan of old technology such as the floppy diskette and I would like to find a 21st century use for it. So my question is; with the smartcard technology we have to day, such as Charismathics and ...
Lilly Mage's user avatar
1 vote
3 answers
3k views

Are (USB-)FDDs supported by Win 10?

Is it possible to use a (USB-)Floppy Disk Drive (3.5") with Windows 10? I have read in a magazine (I think it was c't 14/15, but I'm not sure) that Win 10 would no longer support FDDs (maybe ...
Burgmeister's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
5k views

What files are needed for a bootable DOS floppy disk?

I just made a bootable DOS floppy disk in Windows Vista, but the files are taking too much space. I need more space to store a flash utility program and a ROM file. What files can I safely remove and ...
Samir's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
706 views

Using nonstandard formats with a USB floppy drive?

I was given a USB floppy drive, and it works beautifully. Linux Mint detects it as a Mitsumi FDD 061M, although the case and packaging are no-brand. (Counterfeit?) It realiably reads and writes 1.44MB ...
JCCyC's user avatar
  • 2,635
0 votes
1 answer
1k views

3.5" FDD to SATA / USB

Motherboards these days don't tend to have floppy cable/bus pins. It's a bit "old hat" I suppose. I have such a motherboard, but would like to connect an internal floppy drive to it. It's the sort of ...
Matthew Layton's user avatar
80 votes
5 answers
38k views

What is the little twist in this floppy ribbon cable for?

There is a twist of a few lines in this floppy cable. Why? What is the purpose of it?
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