how to view files on mac powerbook 3400c floppy disk

What’s more, the 400 KB disks could have been formatted with either the short-lived Macintosh File System (MFS) or the more common Hierarchical File System (HFS). This presents a challenge because the same 3.5″ hard plastic diskette could have been used by a computer from 1985 or 1995, and in most cases with no indication about whether it’s from a Mac, IBM PC, Amiga, or other.Īpple alone used the 3.5″ floppy diskette for disks of three sizes: 400 KB (single sided, double density, or SS/DD), 800 KB (double sided, double density, or DS/DD), and 1.44 MB (double sided, high density, or DS/HD, or more commonly, just HD). The Wikipedia entry on floppy disk formats is a great resource (bookmark it!), but even as exhaustive as it is, it’s still incomplete and doesn’t list all of the various computers and file systems that used the 3.5″ floppy disk. One of the primary challenges of capturing data from floppy disks (either 5.25″ or 3.5″) is that the same form-factor was used across multiple generations of disk sizes and file systems. In a way this is a followup to my article a few years ago on building a digital curation workstation and the blog post I wrote for MITH last year on using BitCurator to capture and access data on server hardware.įirst let me explain the nature of the problem. (Quick note: though 5.25″ floppy disks were used by the Apple II, “Macs” only ever used the 3.5″ diskettes, so if I say “Mac floppy disk, I mean a 3.5” diskette.) What follows are some recommendations based on my findings.

I’m a fan of the Kryoflux and recommend it regularly, but it does have several limitations, especially when it comes to cost, so I’ve been looking for alternative ways to access HFS formatted disks, which have a tendency to show up in the born-digital collections of creatives. Variations on this question include: “why can’t my USB 3.5” floppy disk drive read old Mac disks?” or, “How do I access double sided double density (DS/DD) Mac disks?” or, “I have a stack of 3.5” floppy disks that neither Windows nor Linux will recognize, what gives?” However the question is formed, a common recommendation from the community is to use a Kryoflux controller card to capture the data from the drive. One of the more common questions asked on the various digital curation forums is how to access HFS formatted 3.5” floppy disks. A Mac HD 3.5″ floppy disk: Not compatible with 400/800KB disk drives.

How to view files on mac powerbook 3400c floppy disk