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PB Floppy drive

T

thrillz3

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 10, 2004
57
0
Ok, I know I'm probably going to get yelled at for asking this, but here goes:

I might get a 12" PB to replace my sick laptop (which my mom might repair and use for herself as a teacher). (I would of course get a 17" screen to use at home. Extra space and dual monitors rock.) Now, at school, you're not allowed to connect to the network, and not all the computers have CD-RW drives. Is there a cheap usb floppy drive I could get to connect to a PB, so that I could transfer any small files? Yeah, I'd probably get a thumb drive too, but floppy still works better for some things right now.
 
R

rsgunther

macrumors newbie
Jul 22, 2002
10
0
PA
Yes, there are many brands. They hook up with a USB cable & I think all (if not most) are powered through the usb cable (no seperate power adapter needed).

I used one from a company called smartdisk & it worked great. I ended up getting rid of it, because I use CDRW or thumbdrive to get everything done. I haven't used a floppy for probably 8 months+.

However, do a search on google for smartdisk or lacie (they both sell usb floppy drives for the mac). You can purchase them on amazon.com pretty inexpensive (less than $50 easily). There are several different speeds (some of the newer ones have 2X+ floppy speed).

Good luck!
 
T

thrillz3

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 10, 2004
57
0
What about the format? Are Mac Floppies compatable with IBM/ Windows computers? Wasn't that the whole point with formatting them originally?
 
RBMaraman

RBMaraman

macrumors 65816
Jul 25, 2002
1,228
39
New Albany, IN
thrillz3 said:
What about the format? Are Mac Floppies compatable with IBM/ Windows computers? Wasn't that the whole point with formatting them originally?
Click to expand...

My brother uses a USB floppy drive with his flat panel iMac. I just went to Office Depot, bought some IBM-Compatible floppy disks, and used them. I'm not even sure if there are floppies specifically for the Mac, but if there were I doubt they'd work with PC's. Mac's can read and write to PC formats, but PC's can't read or write to Mac formats.
 
T

ToddW

macrumors 6502a
Feb 26, 2004
655
0
I would also recommend using a flash drive. Floppys are becoming obsolete.
 
C

Celeron

macrumors 6502a
Mar 11, 2004
705
9
ToddW said:
I would also recommend using a flash drive. Floppys are becoming obsolete.
Click to expand...

Floppys have been obsolete for many, many, many years now. There really isn't any good reason to use one. A USB flash drive will work just fine 99.9999% of the time.
 
RBMaraman

RBMaraman

macrumors 65816
Jul 25, 2002
1,228
39
New Albany, IN
Celeron said:
Floppys have been obsolete for many, many, many years now. There really isn't any good reason to use one. A USB flash drive will work just fine 99.9999% of the time.
Click to expand...

I disagree. Floppies have been obsolete for many many years, but there are still good reasons to use them over USB flash drives. For instance, many schools lock down or bolt computer towers to desks and tables. Most of these computers only have USB ports on the back of the computer, and getting to the port is sometimes impossible.
 
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