Message: My boss has alot of old files on 5.25 disks, is it possible to connect this type drive to an XP? If so, do you know where I might find one (that works)?? Thanks, Mark

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Using it on XP is possible, finding one may be a different story, you would also need a 5.25inch floppy drive cable as the connction is different from the 3.5inch drive. If you get this far the odds are that you may not be able to get the data off due to corruption or deteriation of the disks. Next problem is the type of files, will you be able to read them with current programs.

You should be able to connect a 5.25in drive. You will probably have to set it up in the BIOS as it is the BIOS that will determine if you can use it, not Windows. If there is no option in the BIOS for 5.25in drives you may be out of luck The only place you are likely to find one these days is in a second hand shop or possible Ebay. Another thing to consider is that 5.25in drives all had edge connectors, not the IDE type of connector on 3.5in drives. So you will also need to track down a cable to connect it. Stuart

Yeah, first check in the bios. If a 1.2 floppy drive option doesn't show there, you're out of luck. You'd need to do the transfer using another PC. Check my first posting here for additional info on 5.25 drives: http://www.computing.net/answers/ha... If you do buy a 5.25, make sure it's a 1.2 meg and not 360K. They look alike so you need to go by the model number. Since a 1.2 will also read 360K disks it will work regardless of which disks you have.

Thanks for the reality check, at least my boss can see that I have tried, sounds like too many maybes to me. He should have thought about this 20 years ago (maybe). LOL -Mark

Surprisingly the data may still be readable. Depends on how and where they were stored. If the data is important it shouldn't be that great a task. The real key is a BIOS that will still recognise the 5.25 1.2M drive. As Stuart already said, without that you will be out of luck. There are plenty of folks (packrats) that still have those drives and cables lying around. I'll bet DAVEINCAPS can fix you up. Cable should be easy. The older cables all had the connector for both. Many had two connectors for each as many would install two 5.25 drives to duplicate disks. The other problem is the head alignment varied from drive to drive. If the drive used to make the disks had a head slightly out of alignment the drive could write and read disks OK but those disks might not read well on another drive.