# Do they make USB 5.25" floppy drives? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 16, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281 "2006-01-16T23:59:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/1 "2006-01-16T23:59:31Z")
I had a dream this morning that they did, which served to remind me that I still have a box of 5.25" floppy disks in my closet. I know you can get a 5.25" floppy drive installed in your computer, but it would only be useful for a day or so, so one that plugs in to a USB port would be much better. But, do they make them? ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/2 "2006-01-17T00:05:44Z")
As far as I know, such a product does not exist in plug and play configuration. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/3 "2006-01-17T00:36:34Z")
Interesting question. I’ve seen 3.5" USB drives, but not 5.25". ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/4 "2006-01-17T02:25:53Z")
No they don’t. The market for such an item would be infinitesimal, though per this thread, apparently not zero. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/5 "2006-01-17T02:46:45Z")
> [@astro](#): > > No they don’t. The market for such an item would be infinitesimal, though per this thread, apparently not zero. I wonder if it’s possible to modify a 3.5" USB drive. That is, take the connecting hardware and attach it to a 5.25" drive? ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/6 "2006-01-17T02:55:29Z")
Nope, they sure don’t. Installation of one is easy if you have an open bay, though, and if you are planning on using one a lot they even make combo drives, with one 5.25" slot and one 3.5" slot in a single 5.25" bay. Heck, you don’t even have to really put it in the bay–just plug it into the floppy interface on your motherboard and make sure it’s got power from the power supply. You’ll have to have the case open, of course. Does anyone make a floppy to USB converter cable? That’d seem to be a low-market item as well, but I’ve got some other weird converters. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Who](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Doctor\_Who](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Who)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/7 "2006-01-17T02:59:07Z")
Check [this](http://www.xpcgear.com/uens525case.html) out. I think this is the best way to do it - with an external USB drive “enclosure.” - Peter Wiggen ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/8 "2006-01-17T03:03:45Z")
> [@PeterWiggen](#): > > Check [this](http://www.xpcgear.com/uens525case.html) out. > > I think this is the best way to do it - with an external USB drive “enclosure.” > > - Peter Wiggen Wrong type of interface. That’s an IDE interface, suitable for optical drives or hard drives. I believe the floppy interface is called IDC. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Who](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Doctor\_Who](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Who)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/9 "2006-01-17T03:08:55Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > Wrong type of interface. That’s an IDE interface, suitable for optical drives or hard drives. I believe the floppy interface is called IDC. Gak. Shows what I know. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/10 "2006-01-17T03:18:47Z")
The only external 5.25 floppies that I’m aware of were parallel port, SCSI or proprietary hookup units with external power supplies. [One example here](http://www.topmicrousa.com/apa95exflpr.html) [Another here](http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-type-4869-External-5-25-Floppy-disk-Drive-Like-New_W0QQitemZ8752845717) ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/11 "2006-01-17T03:20:00Z")
> [@PeterWiggen](#): > > Gak. Shows what I know. :smack: No, it was a good idea and similar to what I was asking about a converter cable. As far as I know, there enough differences between IDE and IDC that you can’t use one for the other (I’ve never tried forcing my floppy cable into my IDE port to see) but I suppose there might be a way to wire it up. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/12 "2006-01-17T03:21:55Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > Heck, you don’t even have to really put it in the bay–just plug it into the floppy interface on your motherboard and make sure it’s got power from the power supply. You’ll have to have the case open, of course. Not all motherboards support floppy drives these days, and as far as I know mine is one that doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/13 "2006-01-17T03:24:44Z")
> [@astro](#): > > The only external 5.25 floppies that I’m aware of were parallel port, SCSI or proprietary hookup units with external power supplies. > > [One example here](http://www.topmicrousa.com/apa95exflpr.html) > > [Another here](http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-type-4869-External-5-25-Floppy-disk-Drive-Like-New_W0QQitemZ8752845717) A parallel interface! Of course! :smack: Why didn’t I think of that? Can you still find SCSI on your modern basic computer? I’d probably default to the parallel port–probably be a little bit cheaper and it’s not like you need phenomenal data transfer rates for a 5.25" floppy. Plus, you’re pretty much assured of having a parallel port. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/14 "2006-01-17T03:30:51Z")
- - - Floppy drives have a different cable as noted–it uses metal tabs along the edge of a PCB, instead of male/female pins, like what current 3.5" drives use. - But as we have noted in past threads–“soft” magnetic media (particularly 5.25" disks) really didn’t seem to hold up well over time. A few years ago I actually paid for a 5.25" floppy to put in a legacy 586 machine I kept around–but every 5.25 floppy that I had ever tried to read was corrupted already. I probably ran across a couple dozen game disks from various sources, and not one would play (snif). …Most of those disks would have been around ten years old by then. The _hard drive_ in that computer was ancient also–a 2.5" that I think it was only 295 **megs** –but it still ran perfect. ~ ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2006, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-they-make-usb-5-25-floppy-drives/340281/15 "2006-01-17T04:22:58Z")
I hope you just got a dud. I’ve still got my 286 and a friend’s VIC 20, and I know the floppies for the 286 and cassette tapes for the VIC 20 worked as of 3 years ago. 3.5" and 5.25" floppies both plug in to the same floppy controller, and I’m almost certain that external floppy drives are just regular drives attached to a cheap PIC that converts it to USB… meaning you could probably hack one up to an external 5.25" drive (though you might end up drawing more than the max 500mA). Overall I don’t see the point though. Your floppy cable almost certainly has the ability the connect to a 5.25" drive (3.5" and 5.25" connectors are different), and it doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to hook it up. I had one attached to my K6-2 for a while, until I got annoyed with Win98 doing random seeks to it just because. (I can’t believe I wrote this much about floppies. :rolleyes: ) Last note, if you actually _do_ try reading some really old disks, make sure they’re write-protected, or that you boot in to _actual_ DOS or \*nix or something. IIRC Windows likes to re-write the FAT for all floppies it reads to enable long-filename support. Unfortunately, this had the side-effect of sometimes destroying copy protection schemes. (Ya know, in case you really wanted to play Commander Keen)