USB Floppy drive

[A1ex]

I bought an IBM USB floppy disk drive on eBay, as I have some info on diskettes that I wanted to access.
My recently built PC has Win7 x64 on an Asus P8Z68-V/Gen3 motherboard, which is SATA 6 and USB 3 enabled.
Unfortunately it has no IDE connectors or floppy drive connectors, hence my purchase.

When I plugged the drive in, I got the usual installing your hardware message, but it ended in failure - Code 10 in device manager.
I tried finding drivers via Google etc with no luck, then I thought perhaps it's not compatible with USB 3, so I plugged it into a USB 2 port, of which I have several. This time it was successfully installed, and works OK.

I had understood USB 3 was backwards compatible, but it appears not.
I wondered if anyone else has had compatibility problems of this nature, and if any solutions have come to light.

Alex

[DrWho]

That could only happen in the UK! (just kidding)

The compatibility factor could just be device dependent.
A drive from a different company might work just fine.

It's good that you decided to do a bit of experimenting and found a fix.

* Those little USB floppy drives can be finicky about reading different disks,
so for that reason I have several of them. If a disk won't read on one drive,
I try another one. I still rely heavily on Floppy Disks and I wouldn't dream of
building a new computer without a Floppy Drive.
I have about 8 Floppy Drives that I've gone through, cleaned, oiled and re-certified
to be in alignment and running at the proper speed of 300rpm.

Good show Mate!

The Doctor

[BATcher]

USB 3.0 is really not yet a mature technology, and is only somewhat better than USB 1 was in Windows 98 SE. Specific drivers are needed for many USB 3.0 devices, and few motherboards include native support. It's more "plug and hope" than "plug and play" at the moment...

[A1ex]

I agree with you, Doc.

Normally I would always include a floppy drive (I, too, have several spare) but my my latest Mobo, an ASUS P8Z68, has no connector for it, plus my new case, a Corsair 300, has no external facing 3.5 drive bays, hence the need for an external floppy.

It's not a problem having to use USB2, a floppy hardly needs a speedy interface!

I also think BATchers comments are right. I got an external USB3 hard drive socket and it took several tries before I got suitable drivers (from MS) that worked.

[DrWho]

I'm experiencing the same thing with my new Seagate 6GB hard drive. My motherboard can only support SATA I and SATA II, and to use my SATA III drive at its full speed, I had to buy a PCI - SATA III controller card. It won't work on XP which I still use. Even on Win-7 drivers must be loaded during install and the operating overhead really slows down boot ups. I took the card out, in disgust, and I just run that drive in SATA II mode, till one day when I get a SATA III compatible motherboard.
I just re-capped my old mobo, so it will be several years before I replace it.

[A1ex]

6GB sounds a bit small for a hard drive, Doc. All my pen drives are bigger than that!

[DrWho]

Alex, you're not reading that right. 6GB means it transfers data at 6 Gigs per second. (or is that per minute?)
NOT that it only holds 6 gigs of data.
It's the fastest hard drive currently on the market. It's also called a SATA III drive. It's Double the speed of a SATA II drive, which is Double the speed of a SATA I drive. Eh? It's capacity is actually 500 Gigabytes.

Even running on a SATA II controller, it's still a pretty Peppy drive.

The Doctor

[A1ex]

Semantics.