
We never thought that we would see a high performance floppy drive, but Dainty seems to have done it. You’ve also got a green access light, that shows you when the drive is in use. Along the front you’ve got an ejection button that recedes into the front of the disk drive when no disk is inserted, but remains easy yet firm to press when you need to eject a disk. The casing is very minimalist, employing a flat black look with the exception of the stylized Dainty logo on top of the drive. The cable is fixed, so you don’t have to worry about losing it. It’s made from a very lightweight, durable plastic that can easily be tossed in a bag, or carried around without being awkward. The disk drive is barely bigger than the floppy itself, and it’s one of the thinnest drives on the market.

With the Dainty External USB Floppy Disk Drive, portability is key. There might not seem like a whole lot you could do to bring the trusty old floppy disk into the 21st century, but Dainty somehow managed it. What separates them from the competition is the fact that they tend to modernize older hardware, and this is evident with their external USB floppy drive. They focus primarily on cables, adapters, and converters that will allow you to access information stored on virtually any storage device. Dainty External USB 1.44MB 2x Floppy Disk Driveĭainty’s tagline is “connecting differently”, and this is clear once you see their product line. Today, we’re going to break down the results of the top three, and help you pick the one that will work best for your needs. We went in depth and tested several floppy disk drives. Depending on how you need to use yours, different drive may be better or worse for these purposes. 3.5-inch floppy disks were on the market for a very long time, and used for a large variety of different purposes. Unfortunately, not all USB floppy drives are created equally.

These are readily available from a variety of manufacturers, so you can take a trip down memory lane and access your old data for less than the cost of a burger and a beer. Likely, your best option is to find an external USB floppy drive.

You can also find internal drives for your desktop, but these aren’t particularly portable. How can you access the information on a floppy disk? You could try and pick up an old computer, although that would leave you stuck with an ancient operating system that restricts access to modern software. Some industries still use expensive specialized equipment that uses floppies, so there needs to be a way for you to access the data. In fact, less than five years ago new desktop PCs were still being sold with floppy drives. Believe it or not, it wasn’t that long ago that floppies were considered the best way to store data. Have you got a box of old floppies kicking around? They might contain old documents, images from an early digital camera, or maybe even some classic games that you’d like to fire up on an emulator.
