Ancient tech! floppies!

OK, floppies kinda pre-date my PC experience.

I have a PC that's Win95, and currently its sole access to the outside world is a floppy drive. I ran a program on it, and wanted to export the results.

I copied the file (a WORD.doc) onto a floppy. I then went into My Computer, clicked the drive, saw the file, clicked it and viewed it....all OK, I knew the file was on the floppy. BTW the floppy is a Verbatim that is "Formatted . IBM".

Put floppy in 2nd computer (XP Pro SP3), it says "A:\ NOT ACCESSIBLE. NO ID ADDRESS MARK FOUND ON FLOPPY DISK".

Put floppy in my buddy's computer (XP Pro SP unknown)- same result.

Need the file for work, so go to Fry's and buy a BYTECC USB External Floppy Disc Drive (BT-144) for $25, which says it will work on Win98/2000/ME/XP/Vista systems. Plug it in and insert miniCD, and 2 minutes after I open the box I've downloaded my file.

1. Did this only work because of the miniCD software? (ie what's going on here? Is this a FAT issue??)

2. Is there freeware that will allow my internal floppy drive to read such a floppy in the future? (Maybe I can copy the files off my BYTECC miniCD?)

3. Floppies aren't advertised as rewritable unless they are MO, but I moved the file off of the floppy and now the floppy's empty, so it looks like these floppies are "reuseable".

Any help is appreciated...

 

According to MS you might need to reformat this floppy and go through the whole exercise again.

 

Hmm, per BYTECC's website, the external floppy drive runs on "Win95 or above"

http://www.byteccusa.com/product/USB/BT-144/BT-144.htm

 

I can't replicate your problem and I doubt anyone else can either, but the floppy in question was not formatted by the BYTECC drive so I'm suggesting you format a disk with that drive and then recreate the file. That should work.

ALL floppies are rewriteable btw.

 

Another thought - try formatting a floppy in the new drive and seeing if you can copy the file from the original floppy in the W95 PC. I'm racking my brains now but seem to recollect that

copy a:\filename b: will prompt you to switch floppies before writing the copy.

Hope that's right :confused

 

I believe that is right, since A and B are considered the same drive. But, will ask to insert disk B. Or something like that.

 

In my experience with working with floppy disks in, say, the last five years, is that 9 out of 10 floppy drives are broken, and 9 out of 10 disks are bad from sitting around so long. ok, so it's not that bad, but, my point is, you have an "older" computer, and the floppy drive hasn't been used in years? it's probably gonna screw something up.

 

Yeah, you'd have better luck installing an ethernet card in the 'puter and networking it and/or emailing files from it. After all, a file that will fit on a floppy would EASILY send as an email attachment fairly quickly.

 

There's nothing wrong with the Win 95 floppy drive or the floppy disk. The OP has already managed to copy the file to CD using his new $25 drive. He's just wondering why it couldn't be read by his XP system's internal drive, so maybe that's the one that is US.

 

Exactly. I try to communicate clearly, even if I don't always achieve it...

 

Is my suggestion of installing an ethernet card not an option, or are you determined to use floppies?

 

Thank you for your suggestion (really!)

Right now I'm attempting to work with what I have (it worked in the distant past, no recent use). If that approach fails, then I'll move on to what appears the next best option.

Thanks again!

 

I am the biggest non-geek around anywhere but I'm sticking my nose in here. (Smack me! But I remember floppies and Win95.)

Is it possible for you to copy the document into email or send it as an attachment? If necessary, you could open a free gmail account and send it there.

 

...which is why I made my suggestion to change that in post 8.