Even though I hardly use floppy disks anymore, I like to keep a floppy drive handy just in case I need to troubleshoot old computers or easily install BIOS updates. Occasionally, some of my friends still bring stuff over on floppy (like Word Docs) and need a way to use it on my system. So, there are tons of these USB floppies on the market and they’re all pretty much the same and oddly expensive for some reason. You can buy a plain floppy drive for less than $10 and yet a USB floppy drive averages $39. Uh, WTH?
Anyways, my one huge gripe with floppy drives is that they’re butt slow. Even worse is that USB floppy drives are even slower than their non-USB brethren.
So, I was out looking for USB floppy drives and almost settled on a regular Sony one (so that it would match the Sony accessory fetish) until the Sony MSFD-20U caught my eye.
The MSFD-20U is not just a regular floppy drive. It also doubles as a memory stick (MS) drive as well. So, even though my TR already has a MS drive, this is a useful feature for me since a few of my other systems don’t have it. This makes this drive more useful for me as a sneakernet device. By chance, my main digital camera is a Sony so this all works out well.
The next nice feature of this drive is that it’s USB 2.0. This is useless for the floppy itself but is a nice addition when you’re using the MS slot since it’s a little faster.
The floppy drive also features Sony 2x FDD technology which allows the floppy drive to run at 2x speed. This is a nice feature because the floppy drive does indeed work faster than other USB and regular floppy drives I’ve used. Most floppy drives operate in the 250-500kb/s rate. That’s roughly 30KB-60KB/s. In an informal test using SiSoftware’s Sandra, the drive clocked in 100KB/s. It’s not exactly twice as fast but it’s a noticeable improvement.
The drive is bus-powered via the USB cable so you don’t need any extra cables. It’s also fairly small so it’s easy to carry around. The one downside of the drive is that the MS slot requires a device driver to function. The floppy drive portion simply works and it works regardless of a USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 connection. In either case, once you get the drive setup and running then it’s truly plug-and-play and you can plug it in and yank it out whenever you want.
So, if you’re looking for a floppy drive then this is a nice one to have. It does cost a little more than a standard floppy because of the extra features. For those of you who do still use floppies regularly then this may be a good one for you since it’s faster than typical floppy drives.
