Imation was created when 3M data products division spun off its data storage products
The Imation Superdisk drives are vintage "high capacity" 3.5" floppy disk systems
Using special 120Mb media but also backwards compatible with standard 1.44Mb and 720Kb floppies
This was well before the USB stick, CD-R media etc
The technology came to a slow death with the advent of new technologies, production being ceased around 2003
Imation Superdisk Drive Kit
Model: SD USB U2
Japanese drive
USA assembly
As New - supplied with the inner "egg carton" packaging, but the outer cover slip of the packaging is not supplied
All items in their sealed plastic bags
Kit comprises of:
Imation Superdisk Drive unit
USB cable
Imation Power Pack (genuine - supplying 5V @ 1.5A)
DVD User Guide & Driver software
Warranty Card (!)
HISTORY:
Many years ago we ran a business converting between many different file formats and media types - these were the days when 8", 5.25" & 3.5" media were commonplace! 3.5" media in particular had a lot of different "flavours" with capacities ranging from 180Kb, 360Kb, 720Kb, 1.44Mb, 2.88Mb, 100Mb Zip disks and these 120Mb Super Disks. This was before the humble USB stick or even a CD-R media product.
Most commonly used in the graphic arts industry as the file sizes tended to be much larger than could be catered by standard floppies.
Especially suitable for agencies that needed to encrypt their graphic or other files, Imation also supplied some special software called BLOWFISH for this purpose.
Suitable for use on Mac or PC OS
We had a number of these drives in use at our facilities - this particular unit was one of our spares, NEW but kept on hand just in case we had a drive failure.
TESTING:
My ability to test this drive is now very limited.
I unsealed the packets and powered up the drive.
Machine for testing was a PC running Win 7 64 bit
Windows recognised the drive, loaded up a driver (not from the supplied DVD) and I had a Drive B waiting for me to use.
PROBLEM! I have none of this old media left anymore, no floppies of any type now. So I could not check the read/write side of things.
I know that users STILL have these connected to their systems, even after all these years! There is a lot of discussion about the drivers online, for everything up to Windoz 10 and Mac OS X
The supplied DVD is not much good for modern systems, it was designed for use with Win 95 and in fact my Win 7 Ultimate machine could not get the DVD to autostart anyway.
This unit has been sitting in our old business stock room and then in the storage units for the last 10 years or so - cool and no possible water issues so I think it is reasonable to expect the drive to continue performing as it should - if you have the correct media.
So, this is a nice "IT Curio" or for someone who has heaps of 120Mb floppies with those "special" files on them - probably graphics.
