Review on 🖥️ Tendak USB Floppy Disk Drive - Portable External 3.5" USB FDD Diskette Drive - 1.44MB for PC Windows 7/8, XP, Vista and Mac - Plug and Play - Black by Bobbie Garrison

Pros: - USB plug and play - Reads both HD/1.44M and DD/720K - Eject lever instead of paperclip - Good price ($20) ) I was able to use the disk with Windows 10 21H1, OpenBSD 6.9 and Raspberry Pi OS Buster. It seemed to identify itself as a floppy disk rather than a mass storage device. It seems to be generally the best you could ask for in a USB floppy drive these days. YMMV with different OSes as it's less about USB floppy drivers or whatever but I haven't had any problems. It identified itself as the TEAC floppy disk drive. To my great surprise, the old (single-hole) 720k floppies worked, including an old copy of MS-DOS/5.0. But most of my hard drives are regular (two hole) high-density microfloppies (DS/DD, also known as MF2HD). What's wrong: - sometimes unreadable - not very long. at least 90% of the time - first. Then he didn't read discs at all. Not as reliable as the floppy drive in my PowerBook G3, but the ability to use it with a modern USB computer makes it a fair compromise. But as soon as he stopped reading CDs, I was unhappy. Okay, I figured the lifespan would be a few weeks IO at best. But in 3 weeks I had probably 4-6 hours actual disk access time. It's just sad. Since it's so cheap: I decided to take it apart. The microplate appeared to spin, but the head did not move. As read errors became more common, I tried a full format, and that seemed to be the nail in his coffin. I could hear the hard drive spinning but couldn't read when it failed. On Linux/BSD, usually an I/O error or an unrecognized media format. Tried three different machines with the same results. Tried floppies on a 20 year old machine with a 1998 floppy drive, they worked fine, so no floppy: it was a floppy drive. How to take it apart: - Note that you will void your warranty and you will not be entitled to a return, replacement, support or anything else - Know that you are NOT allowed to take it apart :P - Peel the quality control sticker below next off to the cable and unscrew. Or break the screw protrusion like I did without even knowing it was there. Carefully pry the sides of the case with a flathead screwdriver, being careful not to break the clips. It just snaps into place like the inner metal frame of a floppy disk drive. Once open, it's a fairly simple floppy disk drive with a conventional two-piece metal frame. It's amazing how small electronics have gotten :P. Don't mess with drive heads, they're easier to break than you might remember: and I'll confess I've scolded mine for not respecting that fact. If you've never disassembled a drive before, never touch the drive heads! Remember that you are on your own when opening the disc and should contact the manufacturer for a warranty instead of opening the disc. Worst case you don't have $20 and order another one. Be careful not to short out the micro USB, it was easy to pop in a disc and watch. Yes, no sign of powerhead movement. I even cleaned it with rubbing alcohol and a cotton swab and it stayed clean. Here's what I think happened: either the mechanism for moving the powerhead got stuck, or the plastic got hot and "jammed". Or maybe they didn't lubricate things well enough. After using some force to get the head moving: I was able to get to the point where the drive mechanism could move when trying to access the hard drive. However, when trying to remember how the hell drives work, by then I had pretty much damaged the top head to the point that now it wouldn't read discs, even though it could actually move the drive head. Would I buy another one? Sure, and I probably will soon. If it breaks again I'll probably take it apart and try again with more care. In this case you should simply use your guarantee or return policy. I would recommend this drive to those who only intend to transfer data from some old drives ie. Transfer data to your hard drive on a modern computer. Do not shuffle data onto an older machine from time to time. Because how long did my disc last. And let's be honest, while my 20 year old floppy drives have proven to be more reliable, they have their issues :P. All in all, this Tendak was a good little drive while it lasted.