No I need a floppy anymore?

slipd

slipd

slipd

Soldato
Joined
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Hampshire, England.
Hey guys,

I’m just in the process of changing my case and upgrading the rest on my hardware. I’m going from a silver to a black case (Antec P182) and I want to know whether or not it is worth getting another, colour coded floppy drive?

The only time I have ever used one in the last three years for my SATA drivers when installing Windows. I’ve tried integrating them using nLite but its never worked… That said, I haven’t tried for about two years, and I understand that the software is a lot better now?

If my new case had 2x 3.5” bays I would get a floppy anyway, but because it has only the one I would prefer to get a 3.5” media reader instead because I get far more use out of it.

Does XP accept SATA drivers on any other format other than floppy – I know it doesn’t do CD… Also what Vista like for SATA drives – surely they’ve sorted this problem out by now :p

Your thoughts:

Cheers,

SW.
 
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If your motherboard BIOS supports SATA drives reporting as IDE (most modern boards do) then you don't need Mass Storage drivers at all to install. If your board doesn't support SATA as IDE, then you can slipstream your RAID/SATA drivers using nLite or similar.

I've not had a floppy disk drive for well over 7 years now.
 
I haven't used a floppy drive for ages, as XP with service pack 2 and vista both have SATA drivers.
If you use RAID then you 'may' need drivers in which case I believe XP will need the floppy (not sure about vista)

If you're using RAID then you should post what raid card or motherboard (if using on board) you have and then people can say either way :)
But for non-raided SATA drives a floppy drive isn't needed.
 
You can also load drivers onto a USB stick, and load that up, so there is no real need for the Floppy drive.

I have one which I plug in as/when I need it, but I could just use my memory stick.

InvG
 
I'd not bother having one in a case, just keep it in a box somewhere. That way if you do need it you can just have it hanging out of the case somewhere.

They come in handy when something goes wrong. I was running memtest off a floppy at the weekend, only problem I had was finding a floppy to put it on!

PK!
 
misterPK said:
I'd not bother having one in a case, just keep it in a box somewhere. That way if you do need it you can just have it hanging out of the case somewhere.

They come in handy when something goes wrong. I was running memtest off a floppy at the weekend, only problem I had was finding a floppy to put it on!

PK!
Click to expand...

The only thing you can't run off a bootable CD in 1.44MB Emulation (1.44MB bootable session on the CD) mode is bootblock recovery flashing (would only be needed in the event of a failed BIOS flash). Everything else you can use a bootable CD for.

Floppys are 99.9999999% redundant.
 
paradigm said:
The only thing you can't run off a bootable CD in 1.44MB Emulation (1.44MB bootable session on the CD) mode is bootblock recovery flashing (would only be needed in the event of a failed BIOS flash). Everything else you can use a bootable CD for.

Floppys are 99.9999999% redundant.
Click to expand...

It achieved the same goal, I've got one to use, so why not use it? Personally I find it easier to use a reusable floppy than waste a whole CD for a small testing program. Plus I didnt have a spare CD to burn it onto as I don't really use them much.

And you can't beat a bit of oldschool nostalga every now and again. :p

PK!
 
sam.wheale said:
If my new case had 2x 3.5” bays I would get a floppy anyway, but because it has only the one I would prefer to get a 3.5”media reader instead because I get far more use out of it.
Click to expand...
get something with the 2 combined e.g. Mitsumi FA404
 
Thanks for the response guys!

I thought I’d have a mixed bag of replies :)

Atm I have a Gigabyte mobo and I’m using a RAID0 setup on an (On-board) nVidia controller. When I upgrade I expect I’ll be sticking with Gigabyte and I shall definitely be keeping a RAID0 as my boot drive.

So a USB floppy or flash drive would be a good alternative to having a floppy drive permanently installed? I’m going to be sticking to XP until at least early 2008, so I think I’ll need the RAID drivers on disk for sure in my next build.

Cheers,

SW.
 
Haven't had a floppy drive since 2004, if you need some drivers nlite them on to your windows cd, but that's unlikely in this day and age.
 
My motherboard needs a floppy for Sata drivers except when running in IDE emulation. Many raid systems still need floppy too.

I picked up a USB 3.5inch floppy drive. It fits the bill perfectly. All my computers are happy to boot off it, even for bios recovery, and windows is quite happy to load drivers off it during installation.

Did try to get windows to accept raid drivers from a USB stick, but it didnt accept any of the sticks I have available :(.

I didnt pay much for the USB floppy drive, and it is much nice than fitting a propert floppy drive these days.
 
I've just bought a USB Freecom drive from the Bay - I just want to be on the safe side :D

And that now means I can press ahead with buying my case and accessories!

Cheers guys,

SW.
 
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