Are USB floppy drives faster than normal ones??

[Slash]

I wanna free up a 3 1/2" bay and I always wanted a faster floppy drive. But if USB isn't faster, then I won't waste the money.

[Tuttle]

Nononononononono. USB floppy drives are painfully slow to use in my experience. I'm not sure exactly why, maybe to do with limits on how much power is available through the USB port or something. All I know is that the one we had at work drove me nuts when I had to boot machines off it.

[daylef]

The problem is two fold.
USB shouldn't be any different since the read/write rate is much slower than the transfer rate. USB is around 10 megabit per second (I think).
The second problem s the ability to boot into DOS. If you don't have DOS USB support (and there isn't much of it) you could find yourself not being able boot at all. The answer to that one would be to enable "boot from CDROM".
It all a matter of cost versus gain.

Cheers

[VinceF]

Originally posted by Slash:
I wanna free up a 3 1/2" bay and I always wanted a faster floppy drive. But if USB isn't faster, then I won't waste the money.

Either way, you will be limited by the physical drive architecture, mechanism and media, so unless you absolutely *require* USB, stick with what you have.


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Contributing Editor
HardwareCentral

[This message has been edited by VinceF (edited 03-27-2001).]