In Apple Mac, sometimes users experience some problems in floppy disk. At times the floppy drive works fine in one Mac, but does not work in any other Mac. Below are some reasons behind this problem and their solutions:
- In 1996 apple introduced 800k double sided floppies in place of previously used 400k single-sided floppies. So Power Macs are unable to read single-sided floppies and earliest Macs are not compatible with floppies that are double sided.
- The high density 1.4MB floppies can only be read by the Mac having high density floppy drives.
- Another reason can be formatting the high density floppy in 800 K floppy drive. These drives can be formatted in pre-HD Macs but to format them on new Macs you need to put the label/tape over HD-square.
- The other reason could be use of IBM’s formatted disks. IBM formatted disks can work in Macs with HD drive if DOS Mounter, PC Exchange, or any other such programs are installed. Moreover IBM formatted disks can’t be used in 800k drives.
- Modern Macs do not have internal floppy drives. So hard density drives can be read through USB floppy drives. But even USB floppy drive cannot read Mac floppies that are 800K.
- Accumulated dust on the heads of the floppy disk can also be one of the reasons. So you need to clean its heads. If it still does not work then it is better to replace it with a new floppy disk.
