USB floppy drive on MacBook Pro

[jamesapp]

Hello,

Wondered if anyone could help with using a external usb floppy drive on my new MacBook Pro.

Running into problems because files won’t fit?

Wondered if I could somehow zip them to fit on floppy drive?

Don’t know if this is the right place to ask?

 

[DeltaMac]

I'm actually surprised that you could get a USB floppy drive to work, as I thought I remembered reading that the support code/drivers for that kind of storage device has gone missing about two macOS versions back (but maybe I misinterpreted something about that)

Depends on the type of file. Graphics files might zip-up, but not be significantly smaller (because some data types can't be efficiently compressed, among other reasons), so compressed files might not be small enough to fit on a floppy.

1.4 MB of space on a floppy just doesn't go very far, so that begs the question:
Where's your USB flash drive, or why don't you use one? I have seen 128GB capacity on sale under $20 recently (capacity>88,000 floppy disks, on your keyring )

 

[SnacksGU]

What is a floppy drive?

 

[udontno]

1.4 MB of space on a floppy just doesn't go very far, so that begs the question:
Where's your USB flash drive, or why don't you use one? I have seen 128GB capacity on sale under $20 recently (capacity>88,000 floppy disks, on your keyring )

Amen to this thought. I am reading this like... the OP has a new MacBook but hasn't purchased a flash drive? Mind blown over here.

 

[maflynn]

Running into problems because files won’t fit?

That's probably due to the fact that 1.44 megabytes is tiny in 2018

 

[dwig]

Hello,
Wondered if anyone could help with using a external usb floppy drive on my new MacBook Pro.
Running into problems because files won’t fit?
Wondered if I could somehow zip them to fit on floppy drive?

There are a number of "floppy disk" formats, I assume your drive is for the last and largest common type, double-density double-sided 3-1/2", which holds a large-for-the-time, but miniscule by 2018 standards, 1.4 Mb. Many of the Ps images I work on are 1000 times too large to fit and some are 10,000 time to large.

Compression (ZIP, ...) can help, but only so much. Some files compress significantly (text, ...) and others are already heavily compressed (PNG, JPEG, DOCX, XLSX, ePUB, ...) and can't be compressed any further. There are tools than can split files into multiple pieces so each will fit on a single floppy, but you need a companion tool on the other end to reassemble them. These tools used to be common, but I haven't stumbled across one in ages.

The big question is why you are writing files to a floppy. It is a pretty pointless thing to do if the aim is to read them again on a modern machine. Use a USB thumb drive or external HDD/SSD for that. If you are trying to create discs to be read on an antique machine you need to be careful with large files, being certain that they will be usable on the old machine.