Comments on: How does one move data from old floppies to a MacBook Pro?

Question: How does one move data from old floppies to a MacBook Pro?

smithmac_99 — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:03:14 -0800

I have some Macintosh-formatted floppy disks from the 1990s. They contain data I would like to have (old writing, Quicken files, etc.). Leaving aside issues of media integrity, how do I transfer these to a modern Mac. I have no access to Mac floppy drive of any kind. I do have access to PCs with floppy drives. But, of course, under normal circumstances a PC doesn't recognize a Mac-formatted disk. How do I get my data from these floppies to my MacBook Pro?

By: tehloki

tehloki — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:06:49 -0800

You could bring them into Kinko's and ask them to burn a CD for you, or throw them on a USB stick. Unless you've stored the floppies well, however, they're fairly likely to be damaged or corrupted.

By: sneakin

sneakin — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:08:27 -0800

Is there a reason you can't buy a USB floppy disk drive and just connect it to your MBP? They're only like $30 or so and I bet cheaper on eBay.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:10:00 -0800

You buy a disk drive and do this or you get a piece of software that allows your PC to recognize Mac disks.

By: dyslexictraveler

dyslexictraveler — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:35:49 -0800

MacDrive will let you read the mac disks in Windows. It costs $49, but they have a free 5-day trial, so if your expeditious, you might be able to get everything you need for free. Then just email yourself the files and download them on your MacBook.

By: joeclark

joeclark — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:41:32 -0800

What era of the 1990s? IIRC, System 8 and later cannot read the very original Macintosh floppy format, which I believe is called MFS. It crashed my old machine several times.

For those cases, you have to find a System 7 machine (yes), copy the files somewhere else somehow, then copy them again to your MacBook.

This would be a good time for Splorp to pop in and nail this down definitively, especially since he actually has all that retro technology.

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:58:28 -0800

Download a live linux distribution like ubuntu or knoppix. From the command line:

insmod hfs
mount -t hfs /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

Copy the files to the local disk or burn a CD.

Cost: 0 dollars.

By: majick

majick — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 12:01:39 -0800

"System 8 and later cannot read the very original Macintosh floppy format, which I believe is called MFS."

Untrue. OSX can read MFS volumes directly, but since those are probably on GCR floppies you're not going to have any luck actually reading physical media since most modern floppy drives can only read MFM.

Assuming these floppies are 1.44M media, plugging in a USB floppy drive ought to do the job. Otherwise you're going to be scrounging around for someone with a GCR-capable drive.

By: pmbuko

pmbuko — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:42:53 -0800

Track down a USB floppy drive and move the files over directly. If you have any friends with PC laptops, they might have an external USB floppy drive stashed away.

By: polyglot

polyglot — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 07:30:43 -0800

This is likely quite difficult. As majick notes, old Mac floppies are physically different in the way their sectors are laid out on the disc from what a PC floppy does, it is likely NOT just a matter of a different filesystem (MFS vs FAT or HFS) on there. You need matching old hardware.