Question Any way to prevent Windows 10/11 from auto-writing a "System Volume Information" folder to an eternal floppy drive?

[Cyber_Akuma]

I recently got a USB floppy drive to backup all of my old disks, the drive is even recognized as a floppy drive in Windows instead of just a removable USB drive. But I noticed that as soon as I read any disk, Windows writes to it. Specifically, it creates that "System Volume Information" folder. Why on Earth would a modern version of Windows even do that by default for a floppy disk? Not like a floppy drive in 2023 is going to be useful for restore points, recycle bins, search indexing, etc and with how small they are that can actually take up usable space. I don't like that Windows is auto-writing to these disks, some of which have had their data untouched for 30+ years.

I tried to look it up, but it was not clear if doing it would disable search indexing or other features system-wide or not, and it seems like anything I would do would also apply to removable USB drives. Since I have several USB drives that are in the multiple-TB range, I don't want to disable it for all removable drives. Windows can tell that the usb drive is a floppy drive and not just any USB drive, so is there any way I can disable it just for floppy drives? I don't want the OS itself automatically writing anything to the disk, especially since I also have some older 720K and non-IBM formatted disks and these external USB floppy drives can be iffy with those. (Yes, I know floppies had a write-protect tab, but that doesn't help me if I DO want to manually write something to the disk, since then Windows will also auto-write that folder to the disk)

 

[gardenman]

I don't think Windows will distinguish between a floppy and a flash drive. Both are simply "removable" drives.

I think the easiest solution would be to remove the folder, then create a blank file named "System Volume Information" with no extension. This will prevent Windows from creating the folder. Unfortunately, that means writing new info to the older fragile floppies, and even though it's 0 bytes, it could be enough to damage one beyond repair. Make backups first.

Reference: https://winaero.com/how-to-disable-system-volume-information-folder-for-removable-drives/