Al_B on 28/3/2012 at 20:38

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Yes, that looks like a version of a mini-IDE connector although it's not the most common type (normally it looks closer to a shrunken IDE connector that takes power as well as the normal data signals). If you hunted around enough you'd probably be able to find something along with an adapter to fit it in your case but it'll probably end up costing more than its worth.

Have you ruled out just buying a USB floppy drive (e.g. (http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/dynamode-external-usb-floppy-disc-drive-black-04877724-pdt.html) this sort of thing?). I suspect it'll save you a lot of pain in the long run and it'll be easier to move between computers if you need to.

seasoned_geek on 28/6/2026 at 20:12

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I know this is an ancient thread, but I just stumbled onto it when I was searching for which models of laptop came with LS-120. I still have a stack of regular LS-120 drives for PC. No, I won't part with one. Been an IT geek for 40 years and an award winning author. The LS-120 is my go-to backup. You can write on the label! 120MEG is more than enough storage to hold multiple copies of books in progress. Fits in my shirt pocket to take it home for off-site storage in case something bad happens to my office.

For those who care to read more about these drives.

(https://www.logikalsolutions.com/wordpress/information-technology/why-the-ls-120-still-survives/)

(https://www.logikalsolutions.com/wordpress/information-technology/why-your-ls-120-quit-working-with-windows-7/)

(https://www.logikalsolutions.com/wordpress/information-technology/motherboard/)

Yes, I'm a bit of a fan-boy when it comes to these drives. I don't care if the rest of the industry hates them! :thumb:

They were working with Windows 11
(https://www.logikalsolutions.com/wordpress/information-technology/microsoft-broke-ide-ls-120-support/)

Working again now. MS un-pooched whatever they pooched.

Being old, I had all of the removable tech of the day.

Jaz Drives?
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaz_drive)

They sucked. Click O' Death heard 'round the world!

Zip Drives?
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive)

They sucked a little less but mostly useless. The media used to fail far too often.

SyQuest SyJet?
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyQuest_Technology)

Yeah, I had more than one of those. Even owned stock in the company until they went belly up. Think I even owned a SparQ or two.
Click O' Death here as well.

Can't forget the Bernoulli Box!
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_Box)

Mine was a dual 10MEG. Took these huge cartridges. You could not leave that thing turned on in your house without going postal! The media inside the cartridge was held up by air. There was a pin hole in each media to mark the start of the disk as it spun by letting a puff of air get through. God forbid you go the cartridges out of sync. Instead of one loud TICK TICK TICK spread out about a second apart, it would be TICKTICKTICKTICK at half volume but twice as often.

In their defence I never had one of those cartridges fail. My patience with a removable drive apparatus that weighed more than most pieces of furniture I had at the time did fail.

Today we have thumb drives and external SSDs without moving parts to fail. Kids don't look back on the landscape of failed products.

Unlike all of the other failed products, the LS-120 still meets a need.

Briareos H on 30/6/2026 at 07:34

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Haha love to see a I-stumbled-upon-this-community-during-a-search-and-thought-I-would-register-and-bring-some-musings-on-the-topic thread. Haven't had one in a long time, thanks for stopping by!

I only remember these actively in use around me for a fraction of my late teenage years. And then still seeing them during early work years, but always in the context of something collecting dust at the bottom of a drawer. Waiting for the unavoidable day a vital archive would need to be extracted from a series of poorly indexed .ARJ files. As someone only vaguely interested in peripherals at the time, my impression was that the SuperDisk was a proper grownup version of the popular ZIP but too late (in Europe at least) to stand a chance of being considered for mass adoption. I mainly remember it sold among office archiving solutions.

I used Hi-MD for personal archiving for close to 12 years but man, while it was undeniably cool (arguably on par with (https://i.imgur.com/R4SjVFb.jpeg) entreprise MO <3) and each disc had ONE WHOLE GB, it felt more grating to use by the day, due to what I assume is the hardware being really only optimised for slow sequential data access. Hi-MD and other MO formats were interesting experiments but I would imagine them too expensive and clunky to justify continued investment with the increasing pace of real-time media storage needs. For me it was all I had for a while, bought with my first salary.

taffernicus on 2/8/2026 at 07:37

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The 'digital dark age' is waiting and i am at a crossroad...

There's a blog where someone has been reporting their disc-burning test results from 1996, 1998 right up to the mid-2000s. I forgot the links

There's actually one more question that remains unanswered: medical-grade CDs (which meet DICOM standards) and how their durability and reliability compare to those of standard CDs and DVDs.

I think I'll also start voluntarily reporting my annual disc-burning(especially M-DISC) test results to forums and communities.