Windows 10: Will Win 10 support a 3.5 floppy drive?

I have your phone number, I will call you. We now completely return this thread to the thread-starter. *Smile

 

Maybe we will see a question about supporting 5.25" and 8" floppy drives *Smile

 

You guys remind of that old TV show from the 80's - remember the size of those floppy's, can't find a picture of the floppy drive though !!!

 

I remember programming a DEC PDP11 computer c.1980 with RL02 'removable' hard disks 10MB capacity about 2ft diameter! See RL02 - Computer History Wiki Those were the days of 8" floppy disks.

I was doing image processing research at the time when a single image framestore cost £30,000 / $37,000 - that's about £400,000 at today's prices !

 

I changed this to unsolved. I got a 3.5 floppy drive from Amazon, a "Y E Data" drive. I get a Code 10 in the device manager. It can't find a driver. The BIOS in my Z170 motherboard properly detects it.

The only place I found a "supposed" driver is one of the pay for driver sites and I refuse to use them.

 

Update, I tried the floppy drive on my Toshiba laptop with Win 10 Home (and all updates) and it works OK on that one.

My desktop, where I really need to use it, is Win 10 Pro. Don't know if there is a difference with floppy drive support???

 

I dug into my closet to find my ol' BYTECC USB Floppy drive I bought years ago. Plugged it into Win 10 Pro. It was detected and works.

Code 10 makes me think it's something else. Right click the device->Properties, select Details tab, scroll down the pull down menu looking for Class uppper filter and/or Class lower filter. What gets reported?

 

I have a clean install of Win10 Pro on a Custom computer built 6+ years ago and I have a Dell external USB 3.5" floppy drive [made by TEAC]. I plug it into a USB 2.0 port and it is identified in Device Manager. I put in a floppy disk and it gets seen in File Explorer under This PC. The same occurs with separate USB 3.0 ports provided through an add-in card.

I bought a new Win10 Home computer about 6 weeks ago that has front combination USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports and the floppy drive is not seen by anything. However it does work when plugged into a USB 2.0 port on the rear of the computer.

Bottom line: I've found there are USB 2.0 things that simply don't always work with USB 3.0 ports even though the ports are supposed to be backward-compatible such as older Thumb drives and printers.

 

USB3 do not have a legacy support setting, so will not work without drivers loaded, which means you cannot use them for booting from a plug in drive. Not sure if a floppy drive is supported on USB3 without specific device drivers

That being said there should be support at all times of the boot process and after as long as the Legacy USB Support Mode switch in the bios is available and turned on, though some modern devices and special use PCs (Servers / Workstations), do not have this in the BIOS or have it switched off by default

I have in the past seen OEM systems where the front USB ports are not correctly connected so do not work at all or work intermittently

 

Not sure what you're saying
> There's no such thing as USB3 legacy setting for USB2. USB3 supports USB2 by design
> Of course, USB3 will not work without drivers loaded
> Special drivers aren't needed for a USB2 floppy drive - if your USB3 works to spec

As to booting a USB floppy from a USB3 port, I just did it

• Dell Optiplex 9020 running Win 10 Pro x64 with legacy boot mode enabled in BIOS and secure boot turned off.
• And only running with Windows generic USB3 drivers as well (see pic below)

My first suspect is still Class filters. Will see what fireberd reports

/* EDIT */
Although, it just occurred to me. The USB3 driver isn't relevant to the discussion! It's all about BIOS. When booting from floppy device, Windows never gets loaded or starts

 

The filter entries that ComputerGeek highlighted are not shown on my systems. Either the Win 10 Home laptop where the drive works or my desktop with Win 10 Pro that it does not work.

The laptop, where the floppy drive works only has USB 3.0 ports. Same with my new Desktop, only USB 3.0 ports.

 

Yea, that's a scam. It should work with the Windows driver.

Let's look at a couple other things

• You said you get a Code 10. Do you see the floppy in device manager with a yellow icon? Or how does it appear?
• To double check, you checked the floppy device for class filters? (not the usb3 controllers)
• Assuming you see the floppy in device manager, use the Details tab again to find Inf Name. What's the inf name?
• Let's also check Storage Volumes. Click View->Show hidden devices to see Storage Volumes. You only need check any one of them for Class Upper/Lower Filters (they'll all show the same result). Several MS filters will probably be listed, Class Upper: volsnap Lower: fvevol, rdyboost, iorate. Is there anything other then those MS filters listed?

 

inf Name : usbstor.inf

Upper and Lower filters have what you list.

Here are a couple of screenshots.

 

Update, I tried my Insider Preview version (dual boot on the same desktop system as Win 10 Pro). I get the same error with the Insider version.

 

Code 10 on device where INF name= usbstor.inf means problem with installing/starting the USB Mass Storage driver. We already checked filters. The next steps I'd take would be looking at driver corruption but as the same problem occurs on other OS install (even if an Insider Preview) don't think it's worth the trouble.

Connecting a USB Floppy should be nothing more then plug and play. I think the simplest solution is $15-$20 bucks for a new one.

/* EDIT */
Forgot. Both OS with the problem are on the same machine. (and it works on another) Have you checked you have the latest BIOS?