Floppy Disk Drives in 2026

Recently, I have needed to get some data from a set of old 3.5" floppy disks - and I learned that getting this done easily in 2026 is no mean feat.

I naively thought that something as ubiquitous as the humble floppy drive would never become abandoned technology and assumed that I could hook one of the many drives I have up to at least one of my machines. This wasnt the case, not one of my machines had the relevant connector that would allow me to connect a floppy drive.

This shouldn't have been a big deal, I thought to myself, I can just get a external USB floppy and use that. However getting one that works under Windows 11 wasnt so easy. I ended up getting an Iomega 3.5" floppy and memory card reader combo device which would work if I used a specific driver - but getting it to work consistently was an issue.

OK, that was a bust, so how about a 3.5" to USB converter? They turned out even harder to find, however there is one solution that is quite readily available. It requires a bit of work to get it going, it isnt for the faint of heart, and there are probably far better solutions - but this is the rabbit hole I ended up going down.

It is essentially a two part 3.5" to USB converter that is connected by a 26 pin ribbon cable. Typically, you will not see both parts sold together, so many people will pass this by as they wont see how to use it. In fact, the only other source of information I found about these was another blog post that lamented the connectivity.

Another thing that will make people pass on this is the fact that the USB connection is not readily obvious. It doesnt use a standard connector, so you will need to source the correct connector type and crimps before you can even think about hooking it up.

In fact, if you are on this blog right now, it may very well be that you have these devices and want to know how I got them working, or you are researching about how they work before you go ahead and buy them for yourself.

This is how I got them up and running for me to get a simple 3.5" floppy drive connected.

The drive I am working with is a simple Sony MPF-920, which seems to have a date code from April 2006. I dont remember where it came from, but I know it was tested and working.

A suitably old floppy drive

The next part to look at is the USB connection. The board is marked as a UF001F, if you run that through Google you will get loads of hits, however the cheapest prices will nearly always be on AliExpress, an example can be found here.

Note the non-standard USB connection on the left

It is important to note where pin 1 is on this board as it is not clearly marked. It is the pin nearest the USB connection.

I got this information from the Electronics and Repair blog who posted an article about this device. 

As I mentioned above, they seem to be the only other place on the Internet that has posted any relevant information about any of these devices. Not only do they identify pin one on UF001F, they also describe a complete pinout for that board.

Please go over there and take a look at their articles, they publish some really interesting things.

The next part is the 3.5" interface. This plugs directly into the floppy drive interface and exposes a 26 pin ribbon connector and a standard floppy drive power connector. This is because the completed setup will attempt to supply power to the floppy drive via the USB connection. This isnt required, however, if you are supplying a separate source of power, for instance from an ATX power source.

This board is marked as an ELS@26-34, searching for this will again bring a large number of results and prices, but the cheapest are once more to be found on AliExpress and sites like that. An example of one can be found here.

Pin 1 is clearly marked on my board as can be seen. It doesnt seem to be different on the other boards I have seen for sale so far.

All you need to connect the two parts of this adapter together is a 26 pin FPC ribbon connector with a 1.0mm pitch. Getting a longer one may be better than a shorter one, you can get bags of these from Amazon for a few pounds, the ones I got were here. Comically, they were packed in a veggy bag from the supermarket and then sealed in a cardboard box...

all those alphanumerics mean 26 pin, 1.0mm pitch...

As I have kept eluding to, the USB connectors on these boards are kind of none standard. If you have spent any time inside a laptop, then you will recognise them straight away, but probably be unable to put a name to them. Plus, you still have to attach a standard USB connection.

I found the correct connectors on DigiKey, and purchased some pre-crimped leads along with them - I hate crimping at the best of times and had no patience in my life to crimp anything this small. The connections are clearly marked on the UF001F for USB, so doing this part of the hook up is relatively easy. I ordered the longest pre-crimped cables they had in stock, they are crimped on both ends, so cutting them in half doubles the amount of leads I have to work with.

Be carful when stripping wire that gets as thin as this, you might end up just cutting straight through it, ahem...

The connector type itself is a JST ZH series connector, specifically a four pin connector.

To make the other end of the USB connection easy, I bought some USB ports from Amazon that have all of the connections marked. Then I simple connected my new lead to these connections - this now means all I have to do is hook it up with a USB to USB micro lead to use it.

these are 5 pin micro USB ports

You need to get either 4 or 5 pin versions of these ports - dont confuse them with the far cheaper power only ports that wont work for this build. As you will see from the image above, I have actually obtained the 5 pin type, the fifth pin is badly identified on these boards, but it should be labelled as ID. This port is used to switch the connection from host to peripheral.

A quick explanation on this; the easiest way to explain what a host connection is would be to compare it to your computer. When you insert a USB device, the computer controls how it is used. This is a host connection.

Whereas when you plug a USB drive into a computer, the drive is not in control of the connection or interaction. This is a peripheral connection.

I dont need a host connection at all, I want the finished device to be on a peripheral connection.

To achieve this, I do absolutely nothing. When the ID pin is kept open, it means the USB connection should be in peripheral mode. 

Grounding this this pin would put the USB connection into host mode. Whilst inapplicable for a floppy drive, it would be useful if this was on a phone and a USB drive connected. This would allow you to browse the contents of the drive.

However, I just dont need a host connection. This is just going to be a regular USB device that I attach when needed, so I am leaving this pin open to configure it as a peripheral device.

If you want to know more about USB and its technical specifications etc, then the very best place to start is Wikipedia. It gives a good explanation for people who dont know much about it beyond using it and contains all the links to take you on to the technical documentation. But for this build, we dont need to go into any further detail.

an ugly, but functional USB lead with a background of messy desk

With all the parts of the device connected and with the appropriate interface attached so we can hook it up to a host device. But before we do that, I need to carry out some basic tests. Firstly, I need to check that the USB interface is hooked up correctly to the USB port. With the ribbon cable removed from this part of the device, I can attach this to my computer and check to see if the interface is detected and installed.

the entire thing connected

Windows should detect the connection and install the hardware it has just seen. Next, I need to disconnect from the computer and reassemble the entire device - this is the point at which we test the finished build.

Windows should detect the floppy drive after a short delay - if you have been following this article along and your floppy drive doesnt appear in Explorer, just pop in a disk. The drive should start reading the disk straight away and appear in Explorer.

If you go and check in Device Manager, you can confirm two things; that a a USB floppy controller and a floppy drive itself has been installed:

you should see a USB floppy controller installed

It seems to show up as a TEAC drive regardless of the drive you are actually installing.

you should also see a floppy drive installed

One odd behaviour I noticed here once everything was connected up is that the drive activity light was on all of the time, even when there was no disk in the drive.

Also, the drive really complained when trying to read a disk. This could be down to a number of different things, I went through an entire box of disks when testing this drive. It could read all of them apart from one, which I know was used up until quite recently. So it could be down to the media itself, also a large number of these disks could have been formatted for other systems, and Windows 11 doesnt seem to be able to trigger an error. However, it read a disk that was formatted on Windows XP and last used in the late 00's read fine.

So this could be down to a file system issue?

There is the fact that the interface itself identifies itself as being made by TEAC, the drive itself is made by Sony - so there could be a compatibility issue in play here. That is something I can test by getting hold of a TEAC drive, which I think I might have..

But, if the drive doesnt not spin up when you insert a disk it means you have one of a number of problems:

• Your drive doesnt work. See if you can test it out in another machine, if at all possible. I know that if you are reading this then that might be harder than it sounds...
• You have reversed the connections with the ribbon cable. This could potentially damage the drive and the 3.5" interface so it makes a lot of sense to ensure you get the right pins connected.
• Your USB connection isnt working. Change the USB lead if it is inconsistent, then check the solder joints on the USB port. Also, check the cables on the USB connector on the USB interface.
• This actually happened to me when I was testing my connection. My USB 2.0 ports didn't work with this device. It only started working on my USB 3.0 ports on that machine.
• You are not supplying enough power to the floppy drive. The power for the drive is supplied by the USB connection. Depending on what you are connecting to, you may not be getting enough power over the connection to allow the drive to function. To resolve this, provide a separate power supply, it only requires 5 volts.

And fantastically, I have a working USB to floppy interface. And even this was easier than getting an IDE to USB interface working... Obviously with some caveats...

Finishing up, there are some considerations that need to be noted about what I have done here. Firstly, this is a long string of devices held together with different connectors. It isnt something that I can just have out on the desk forever, it would just get damaged.

This is a build that will require some sort of enclosure to hold it for the long term, and one that has enough space to have all of the components used above to fit in. If you have experience with 3D printing, then it shouldn't be hard for you to knock one out pretty quickly. Or, you could repurpose another enclosure to serve as its home. But, bear in mind that you may need to provide a supplementary power supply.

And that leads me on to the second issue - power. If you are planning on running this from a USB hub, then you may find out that you simply dont have enough power going to the device. The drive I am using states it requires 5 volts DC and 950 mA, that is not a small amount of power when we are talking about USB. 

You may want to consider making your own 5 volt power supply, or consider using an ITX power supply. If you are feeling even more ambitious with your build, why not an ATX power supply? The choice is yours, all you need to do is source some floppy drive Molex connectors. Whatever you choose to do, make sure it is the safest choice, please dont go trying to make your own wall charger or anything like that. 

Personally, I think using something like an ITX power supply is one of the best ways to go. They are small, safe and they provide all of the connections you need.

Lastly, this is a basic floppy solution. It may not provide the full functionality of a floppy host controller that you would normally find on a motherboard. It struggles to read disks that shouldn't be giving it issues. If you are a technician, then this isnt the solution for you, there are better solutions out there which I will be taking a look at in the very near future. If you are looking for a simple USB floppy solution, then this isnt for you either. It is fiddly, requires some basic soldering skills and needs you to get components from multiple sources.

I could only really recommend this to someone who is investigating the idea of building their own USB floppy drive and wanted to understand (some of) the capabilities of the components they are using. Or perhaps someone who is interested in adding a floppy drive to a single board computer like the Raspberry Pi.

Something tells me that this wont be the last time I take a look at floppy drives... When I was researching the potential solutions for this, there are a plethora of even more technical solutions that would have taken me even further down the rabbit hole - there are even alternate solutions to the humble floppy drive itself.

However the next thing I will be looking at is a similar issue with the legendary Zip drive from Iomega. I have a similar problem to solve there - going from an older interface to USB.

But - did I manage to get the data from the disk I was working on? The answer is yes, I did. Plus a lot more from the disks I used for testing. None were labelled, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found some Acorn software on them :)