Retro-fitting

superrandall64

superrandall64

New Member
I work for the City, as an Engineer. We have hundreds of 5" floppies with data we need to move to a hard drive. There isn't one computer here that has a 5" floppy drive. I might have an old computer at home with that type of drive... but will WinXP recognize it? How could i find drivers?

Is there an extenal 5" floppy drive -similar to the $20 USB 3.5" drive you can buy at Wal-Mart?
 
You can buy external Floppy drives in nearly all computer stores! They just plug into your USB. :)

Yeah, XP will recognize a floppy drive no problem, as for drivers, just check the web-site of the company that makes your drive.
 
Do they still sell 5" floppy drives? It's been nearly 10 years since I last saw one on a very old Acorn. You may have to slowly go through OS's updating the files slightly as you go as some of the formats may be unreadable with modern technology.
 
Best bet would be to find someone who has a really old computer with a 5" floppy drive, then transfer all the files to a hard drive, and then copy them to a modern hard drive or other media.
 
well... do you think geek squad, or a similar business would do a job like that? i'm sure the city can afford to pay for a project like that.

they mentioned it to me... with this "if you can do it" tone. implying that it may not be that important.
 
I doubt geek squad would have any of those old machines, but they might. But since you have so many disks, it would take a lot of time to copy everything, and they probably charge like $20-$30 an hour.
 
Just look around for a typical internal drive. Basically any computer can still use it as long as they have the correct cable(same interface as a 3.5", just different plug on most) I know XP works fine with a 5.25" drive as well.
 
I have 2 old computers that have them.
I'll sell you one for $50 :p
The whole computer, that is :p
Better than junking it, I suppose :]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top