Anyone still using a floppy disk drive?

Participant · 23 Oct 2006 at 17:26

I've got a white one fouling up the front of my black Lian-Li case and refuse to pay £5 for a piece of aluminium the size of a beer mat, therefore I am considering removing the floppy disk drive!

Does anyone still need theirs or can USB pen drives contain boot / recovery information and more importantly can computers actually boot from USB drives?

Joe42 · 23 Oct 2006 at 17:29

Haven't used one in two years. What can you do with 1.44 mb?

You can get a 1gb memory stick for about £15 these days.

Not sure about booting from usb drives, why would you need to?

Participant · 23 Oct 2006 at 17:30

Yes, but can you recover Windows from it?

Joe42 · 23 Oct 2006 at 17:30

Robbie G said:
Yes, but can you recover Windows from it?

XP works completely from the cd.

Supercow · 23 Oct 2006 at 17:41

How would you install SATA drivers without a Floppy?

Tom|Nbk · 23 Oct 2006 at 17:46

ive got a black sony one only paid about 3 quid, still find it handy for some things such as bios flashes sata drivers etc

Participant · 23 Oct 2006 at 17:47

sup3rc0w said:
How would you install SATA drivers without a Floppy?

Surely you can still use SATA drivers with your motherboard until you've booted back into windows, then you can download some if necessary.

semi-pro waster · 23 Oct 2006 at 17:48

sup3rc0w said:
How would you install SATA drivers without a Floppy?

Slipstream them onto an nLite disk or similar is one way but most motherboards now support booting directly off a SATA drive without any drivers needed unless it is a Raid array.

Some people put their floppy disk drives in the 'wrong' way round so that they aren't visible externally but you can use them if necessary, basically for a rebuild/re-format you will probably have the side of the case off anyway.

Most motherboards do have a boot option that allows them to boot off a USB drive.

Personally I have a floppy disk drive still because I bought one with the rest of the PC parts and it is black to match the case but I barely use it unless I am fixing a really old PC without USB.

Participant · 23 Oct 2006 at 17:50

So for a new SATA RAID array you'd almost certainly need a floppy disk? Would it work transferring the info from the manufacturer's floppy to a USB drive using another computer?

Snapshot · 23 Oct 2006 at 17:59

The manufacturers usually just supply a CD and you have to work out which driver you need to put on the floppy. The XP (etc.) installation routine only looks at A: AFAIK so a USB drive isn't much use. I always include a floppy drive in my builds. It's rarely used but just occasionally it's vital. And for a fiver or less, why leave it out?

Jonathan

semi-pro waster · 23 Oct 2006 at 18:02

Robbie G said:
So for a new SATA RAID array you'd almost certainly need a floppy disk? Would it work transferring the info from the manufacturer's floppy to a USB drive using another computer?

As far as I recall XP doesn't allow USB devices for the installation of drivers so no it wouldn't be possible. While motherboards will boot from USB devices(e.g. if you had an installation of a 'stand-alone' Linux distro then it would boot) that doesn't mean the OS will necessarily be able to use them at this stage and since it wasn't coded into XP it won't work. I have no idea if you can slipstream SATA Raid drivers onto an nLite CD although I see no reason why not. I'd probably just put the floppy disk drive internal to the PC if it was going to be a problem.

A.N.Other · 23 Oct 2006 at 18:05

I have one purely for bios flashing etc. I haven't used one for data storage for soooo long now.

rpstewart · 23 Oct 2006 at 18:14

A.N.Other said:
I have one purely for bios flashing etc. I haven't used one for data storage for soooo long now.

Same here, it lives in the cupboard with all the other obsolete junk and gets brought out if I need it. For the number of times it's required I can handle taking the side off the case and plugging it in.

Darg · 23 Oct 2006 at 18:26

I have a USB floppy drive that does me for any floppy needs I have. My case does have a 5.5 to 3.5 inch drive converter but I can't even find any old floppy drives around the place. I remember back when a game used to fit onto one small sized 900kb floppy disk. :rolleyes:

I believe you can get a utility to make a CD disc bootable and then you can put anything you need on that.

Joe42 · 23 Oct 2006 at 19:08

You can bios flash with a cd usually, certainly on all recent asus boards. Almost all sata implimentations seem to work quite happily without needing to install a driver.
The only time i have used a floppy disk recently was when i was struggling to get my A8n sli deluxe to work, and i was trying the secondary sata controller, and that needed a floppy to begin with. After a bios update the primary controller worked and i think the secondary one worked driverless. So i think its only old or rubbishy sata controllers that demand a floppy.
Certainly my A8n32 sli deluxe never needed one.

Rroff · 23 Oct 2006 at 19:51

semi-pro waster said:
Some people put their floppy disk drives in the 'wrong' way round so that they aren't visible externally but you can use them if necessary, basically for a rebuild/re-format you will probably have the side of the case off anyway.

Thats a neat idea - never thought of that...