USB floppy drive and windows 10

hi all. i have bought an external USB floppy drive as i need to access a floppy disk for use on my commodore amiga.

now i have plugged the drive in and it shows up in computer, but when i try open it, i get the message A:/ is not accessible. the disk media is not recognised. it may not be formatted.

and if i try to format it, i get the following message: windows was unable to complete the formatting.

the write protection is off also. i have tried googling the problem and it seems i am not the only one with this problem but there doesn't seem to be a solution to it. it seems it is a case of typical rubbish windows 10.

anyone else had the same problem and perhaps solved it?

Hi, When I bought one for my pc I had the same problem, I checked online and downloaded the correct drivers for the floppy drive and it worked fine from then.

Amiga Disks and the format of them is incompatible with a PC drive, the drives are physically different...

you can read a standard 1.44MB DD Floppy formatted as FAT on the Amiga, But reading Amiga formatted disks on the PC is not possible..

You need a SuperCard Pro or Kryoflux (both USB) or the Catweasel floppy controller (if you can find them nowadays)

have a read here... https://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-118

Yes, I regret many years ago when asked to ditch some parallel port mounted floppy drives - another alternative to the specialist gear - I also read about it once in AF how to make a compatible floppy drive or somewhere.

Just done a search and found this:

http://amigastore.eu/en/439-amiga-external-floppy-disk-drive-adapter-m2.html

Do you have access to a Linux USB stick? If so boot up into Linux and see if the USB drive is working OK in that and you can format and read disk.

I think the posters above have missed a step and assumed you're trying to read an Amiga disk on the PC, whereas I think you're having problems just using the floppy drive in general.

yeah id first of all use a live distribution of linux and see if it works on linux, im presuming its an issue with windows 10. using a live distribution of linux is easier than messing around with another install of windows as nothing is installed, personally ive played around with knoppix on dvd

Do you have access to a Linux USB stick? If so boot up into Linux and see if the USB drive is working OK in that and you can format and read disk.

 

I think the posters above have missed a step and assumed you're trying to read an Amiga disk on the PC, whereas I think you're having problems just using the floppy drive in general.

Quote from the Original Post

" now i have plugged the drive in and it shows up in computer, but when i try open it, i get the message A:/ is not accessible. the disk media is not recognised. it may not be formatted. "

This to me says the drive is working, but when they put in their Amiga disk it's not reading, which is exactly what I assumed was happening..

if it doesn't work with a standard 1.44 DD PC format disk, then that's a different issue, but this wasn't stated and with the information given I assumed the drive it's self was working fine...

Also

and if i try to format it, i get the following message: windows was unable to complete the formatting.

is what will happen trying to format an amiga disk in a drive that wont recognize it.

is what will happen trying to format an amiga disk in a drive that wont recognize it.

I'm not so sure what's so special about an Amiga formatted disk but I can put a BBC Micro, Atari ST, or Sinclair Spectrum formatted disk into my PC and Windows will just format it.

I'm not so sure what's so special about an Amiga formatted disk but I can put a BBC Micro, Atari ST, or Sinclair Spectrum formatted disk into my PC and Windows will just format it.

Amiga FDD's ran at 300rpm, while the PC runs at 360rpm - so the drive needs to be compatible with slowing down to 300rpm

Also, PC FDD's wait for a signal pulse before starting disk access, the amiga drives dont, as it's triggered by a button/switch when the disk goes in...

so basically, the physical differences in the drive(s) prevent it...

I've just formatted an Amiga magazine cover disk on my PC.

3.5" Floppy disks are DD or HD, the PC doesn't care what's on them or how they've been previously formatted.

I would guess that the OP is having this problem:

Formatting a 720K floppy disk over USB fails with Windows 10

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5733/formatting-a-720k-floppy-disk-over-usb-fails-with-windows-10

I've just formatted an Amiga magazine cover disk on my PC.

 

3.5" Floppy disks are DD or HD, the PC doesn't care what's on them or how they've been previously formatted.

 

I would guess that the OP is having this problem:

 

Formatting a 720K floppy disk over USB fails with Windows 10

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5733/formatting-a-720k-floppy-disk-over-usb-fails-with-windows-10

The Disks them selves are basically the same, and you can usually put an amiga formatted disk in a PC, and format it for use on the PC, but to directly read/write in AMIGA file format, or read AMIGA stuff from the disk, it cannot be done on a PC without a special drive or piece of hardware, as stated above...

why can't you just accept that a PC will NOT read an AMIGA FORMATED disk as standard...

Oh, and amiga didnt use 720kb, it was 880KB or ~1.6MB (rarer) - because of the spin speed of the disk (300 rpm as I said above) they could fit slightly more on the disk...

so yes, format a 720kb floppy in windows, it will work, but you cannot then put that in the amiga, format it, then put it back in the PC and have the PC read it..

You can however, format to standard FAT, and put it in the Amiga, and the Amiga will read it - but you need 3rd party software (dOpus or similar)

Yes Amiga's were even superior in their floppy storage too!

Side note; my Amiga 1500 booted quicker than my AMD 400 Hz Processored PC running Windows 98.