General > General Technical Chat
So who makes floppy drive read/write heads?
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Alex Eisenhut:
USB floppy drives are still made, so someone has to be making r/w heads, or where billions made in the '90s and someone bought them all?

I've only found specialized magnetic stripe reader head manufacturers, that's all. Those are more like audio tape heads than digital heads.
tooki:
Honestly, I kinda doubt anyone is actually still making floppy drives any more. I cannot find them from any name brands, just countless no-name brands selling external USB units, none of which is likely to be making the actual drive mechanisms. (There were never that many companies making the mechanisms, and IIRC Teac was the last one standing, but they don’t make them any more. Or if they do, it’s not something they advertise.)

My hunch is that supplies are dwindling and will eventually run out. We probably just haven’t yet because nobody is buying them.

Consequently, I doubt anyone still makes the heads, and I suspect they were made in-house by the drive manufacturers.
AndyBeez:
I agree with @tooki - floppy drives are a dead format. No one is producing volume parts for FDDs. Not even North Korea.

The only FDDs I've seen are new old stock. There are FDD simulators which are a SD card reader in a 3.5inch floppy disc form factor. These are often used in music equipment from the 1990s - equipment that still rocks, but the Midi record to 3.5inch floppy just sucks now! One simulator even makes the 'buzz' of the floppy :-//

I wager somewhere in the past 20 years, the last stocks of mag heads went into landfill as it was just uneconomic and pointless to hold them. If you need a specific model or type, try the vintage computer sellers who might have a cache of retro parts. But really, finding a matched 2SA/2SB transistor pair for a 1972 eight track is more likely.

A decade ago I sold a stack of pristine never used FDDs on ebay because they had been surplus since 2000. They went somewhere; bets most are sat still unused after having been resold or swapped.
Sal Ammoniac:
I have a USB floppy drive for one reason only: to access old files I haven't gotten around to copying to modern media yet. I haven't bought blank floppy disks in over 25 years. I suspect that the vast majority of people who still have a working floppy drive fall into this category.
james_s:
I have some USB floppy drives that I use frequently, I have several oscilloscopes and other instruments that have floppy drives to transfer data. I also have a collection of vintage computers and I have bought NOS floppy discs within the past few years. I know I am part of a tiny minority though.
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