Can't get floppy drive to work.

Ok, I know that floppy's are are outdated, but I have a bunch of files that I created years ago when floppy was all you had.

I had an IDE floppy in my computer that I was using and one day I tried to open some floppy files and it said that the disc wasn't formated and did I want to format the disc.

I got a brand new floppy and it said the same thing. I tried to format it and got a message that said Windows could not format the disc.

So, I thought maybe the old IDE floppy drive had gone belly up. I ordered a new USB floppy drive from TigerDirect and installed it. It does the same thing.

Can anyone help me get this floppy drive working so that I can access the files.

I have an HP Compaq dc7600 small form computer running XP Pro, SP 3. The floppy drive that I ordered is a PowerUp G54-8016 external USB floppy drive.

Any help would be appreciated.

I don't know why the IDE floppy was working then quit, and now the new floppy won't work.
 

scbjmshpv

New Member
try to see if you run it as admistration and it working or not? also try to update drivers if possible

EDIT: also try to run windows in safe mode and see if it lets you open the files
 
Last edited:
try to see if you run it as admistration and it working or not? also try to update drivers if possible

EDIT: also try to run windows in safe mode and see if it lets you open the files

Hey, guys, I just went to my computer room, the computer I am now on is in my study, and opened the floppy's on an IBM that has an internal floppy drive in it. It opened the floppy, I could access all the files.

Wouldn't that suggest that when I had the IDE floppy drive in this computer and it quit working that something happened in the study computer.

Ran in safe mode and it would allow me to format a new floppy disc, but not open or format a used floppy disc. I also tried to update the driver and received a message that no better driver could be found. I tried updating the drive in device manager. Thanks.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Floppies aren't that reliable anymore. Either the floppy itself goes bad or the drive goes bad. If you have important data on floppies I would highly recommend getting the data transferred to a cd or usb flash drive or external drive.
 

2048Megabytes

Active Member
I second what Johnb35 has stated. Putting valuable data on a floppy drive is just asking for it to be lost. Floppy disks are so unreliable. Thank goodness new technology has been invented. USB flash drives are miles ahead in reliability and data storage capacity.
 
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