YEY 3.5-inch USB-C External Floppy Disk Reader - 1.44 MB Portable FDD for PC/Laptop, Plug and Play Compatible with Windows 11/10/8/7/XP (Black)

This works well and was easy to use on windows 11. I had some disks in a box and wanted to know what was on them before I tossed them. The price was good. My disks were empty, and I kept them with this reader for nostalgia. Aaac Service heating and air recommends this reader.

I haven't used it for an hour, but it read my 34-year-old 3.5" floppies on my 2024 MacAir (ARM) flawlessly. I followed the enclosed advice to insert the disk before connecting, but all the subsequent disks (after popping out the first) worked perfectly without reconnecting to Mac. The Mac did ask, once, "Should I allow this weird thing?", not a problem. Note that the unit has both USB-A and USB-C plugs.

This was a great option for an affordable way to see what was on some old floppy disks I came across. It was worth the investment. Initially I thought it was not going to work with my laptop. It took me a solid 10 minutes to figure out how to access the drive on my windows 11. I don't know why it was so difficult, but I had to go to Folders then use the search bar to look for the Floppy Drive and open it from there. If there's a more direct way I wasn't able to find it and there were no directions for accessing the drive once it was plugged in. It looks like other reviewers had it open upon plugging it in and although that is how my computer is set up that didn't happen no matter how many times I tried. No big deal now that I know how to do it, but it seems like it would be easy enough to include instructions especially troubleshooting for if it doesn't immediately open a folder on your desktop. Included in the box was "instructions" for use on a mac system but even then it was just hardware parameters and plugging it in after inserting the disk. Once I found the access it worked great. A little slow but really not bad for the age of the tech. I couldn't open certain photos that I assume had been corrupted and there were a couple video looking things that weren't compatible either but that isn't the drives fault. I easily transferred everything I wanted into a new folder. I'm happy with this device and will write the directions on it so I can use it easily in the future!

Perhaps I received the only dysfunctional unit in the batch, but the experience wasn't good. I tried USB3 and USB2 on two separate machines. I finally got the unit to read a diskette after connecting it to an external USB hub with its own power supply (product documentation mentioned that low voltage on the USB port might cause issues). The next issue was with changing diskettes as the unit didn't recognize the new diskette until I restarted my PC which really wasn't a viable solution. Also of note, Windows 11 did not recognize the unit as a USB device, which conflicts with the item description of "USB 3.5-inch USB Floppy Disk Reader".

I was asked to recover info from 30+ FDDs by a friend. Did have old 3.5 & 5.25 drives in storage, but not a MB to run them, so ordered this. The Yeh looks great out of the box. The case is plastic, but heavy & solid with rounded corners and chamfered edges. Cable is thick, has strain relief at case and includes both attached USB A & C plugs instead of adapter that can be lost. Inside is a tried & true Teac mechanism. Inserting/removing a FDD is smooth & solid. In operation, it clacks & whirs, but that is what FDD drives always did. Yeh was recognized by Win 10/11 on everything from USB 2.0 to 3.2. File Explorer listed as "A" and as Teac FDD in Device Manager. That said, my project had to be put on hold. Turns out all the disks were 2-DD or 2-HD from the 90s. They all were recognized, but none usable. A few contained programs unsupported since DOS or Windows 95. The rest with the important docs & pics had been compressed with either Dblspace or Drvspace - also unreadable by any modern OS except for single visible READTHIS.txt file. Will keep this excellent drive, but wait for some snow days to play with a VM/DOS 6.22/Drvspace machine and try again.

Product and shipment as expected. Perfect reading for these so very old 3.5in. disks

Update 11-10-24: I just tried using a FUJIFILM 2HD MAC disk (a disk formatted for use only on Mac computers) and it failed to read because it said the format was incorrect. I just realized this adapter only reads IBM (formatted for Windows OS) type disks. I hope other buyers are aware of this. All the IBM type disks I inserted read everything fine (except some old fonts but otherwise normal). Tbh I think it's funny that my Windows OS couldn't recognize the Windows OS floppy disks but my Macbook reads everything fine except for the Mac formatted disks... lmao ------ I initially thought this adapter was best suited for use with Windows OS, from XP and above. I have a MacBook Pro with a virtual machine (Parallels) that enables me to use Windows as a virtual machine. Every time I want to use any type of Windows compatible software, I simply start up Parallels and or open a file with a Windows based app (Parallels will start automatically). I've never run into any software or hardware compatibility issues previously. I plugged in the VEY adapter with USB, opened Parallels and Windows started, then looked for the adapter. It was listed as a drive called W with a big question mark. I put in the floppy disk, and was unable to open it -- there was still a big question mark listed atop the W drive. So I stopped Parallels, closing Windows. My MacBook automatically recognized the adapter with its usual icon for unidentified new flash drives. I was able to open all the files on my 2004 era 3.5 mm floppy disks very easily. The only issue I encountered was that some if the old fonts in Word from 2004 were not recognized by the new version of Word (which substituted Times New Roman for me). But there were no files that couldn't be read at all. I'm not sure what to say about this adapter. It really does work well, but tbh I'm not sure I'd 100% trust it on Windows. I mean, I've literally used Windows as a virtual machine (with various updates and new laptops, ofc) on my MacBook since around 2009 without any issues. But suddenly I can't use this adapter with it, which seems strange and maybe sketchy? My advice is to simply use this adapter with MacBooks but don't expect it to have zero compatibility issues with Windows. The adapter came with a long list if troubleshooting tips for Windows operating systems. To me that in and of itself is lind of a red flag! Which, tbh, is also why I prefer Apple OS to Windows since the vast majority of errors and software compatibility issues I've had, in my 30+ years of using computers since the 1990s, have been associated with Windows OS.

This USB 3 1/2 inch floppy disk reader basically worked, but unlike many other readers, it does not activate upon inserting a floppy. The only way it would activate is to insert the floppy, disconnect the USB cable, and then reconnect the USB cable. At that point it would activate and read the floppy. I used it with both a Windows 7 laptop and a macOS laptop running macOS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).