Floppy Disk Access when you've got an older Mac as well as the new one running El Capitan-Scenario #1

Scenario #1: You own an older Macintosh in working order as well as your current Mac running 10.11.

 

As I said, you only need to take the older Macintosh, such as my 2006 MacBook running 10.6.8, plug in an external floppy drive and a flash drive or external hard drive. You’re up and running.

 

 

 

You can purchase external floppy drives from many computer retailers. I would warn you, though, that not all external floppy drives can read Windows/MS-DOS double-sided dual density disks and Mac-formatted high-density disks. Most can only read the high-density (1.44 Mb) disks.

 

I would advise you to turn to floppydisk.com in Orange County. They sell two kinds of USB floppy drives. The cheap one reads only Windows/MS-DOS high-density disks. The more expensive one will read all three kinds of floppy disks. This is the one I use. 

 

 

If you encounter Mac floppy disks of 400K/800K capacity, you’re out of luck. You’ll need an older Mac with a built-in floppy drive to read them. Ebay?

 

Thomas Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog