Any need for floppy drive in a new system?

Is there any need for a floppy drive in a new system? If, for example,
I were to use an Intel mb that has its drivers on a floppy, as I have
heard that the DP35DPM does (go figure!), what would the workaround be?
USB? CD?

I figure I would rather not put in the extra cable if it is not needed.
The $20 expense is negligible.

Thanks
KK

In article , Ken says...
Is there any need for a floppy drive in a new system? If, for example,
I were to use an Intel mb that has its drivers on a floppy, as I have
heard that the DP35DPM does (go figure!), what would the workaround be?
USB? CD?

I figure I would rather not put in the extra cable if it is not needed.
The $20 expense is negligible.

Thanks
KK

I've not needed one for a few years now. BIOS updates come as windows
executables and there's no reason you can't set SATA to IDE mode,
install Windows then the SATA drivers and set the SATA back to SATA in
the BIOS.

Although Vista negates all of that because it'll look on a USB stick
for them.

--
Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't
looking good either. - Scott Adams

Floppy drives are obsolete.

Which OS? What drivers?

It is difficult to install some drivers for Windows XP without using a
floppy. (It is supposed to be possible to slipstream things like RAID
drivers, but I have never done it.) Some boards with Intel chipsets may not
require added drivers to install the OS onto a single SATA drive, though.

Vista permits you to load drivers from CD or USB flash drive, so you'd need
no floppy there.

I have a floppy drive in my Vista machine, but I rarely use it. For
utilities that must be run from a DOS-like OS (e. g., a BIOS update), I use
a bootable USB flash drive. A little old 256 MB drive has lots of capacity
for that purpose, while a bootable floppy generated by Vista doesn't have
enough space.


Return address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

"Ken" wrote in message
...
Is there any need for a floppy drive in a new system? If, for example, I
were to use an Intel mb that has its drivers on a floppy, as I have heard
that the DP35DPM does (go figure!), what would the workaround be? USB? CD?

I figure I would rather not put in the extra cable if it is not needed.
The $20 expense is negligible.

Thanks
KK

Tiger Direct sells an external USB connected 3.5" diskette drive that works
superbly. And you are right, some software vendors still resort to storing
their backup/startup files on diskettes.

Ed Cregger

------------------

"Bob Knowlden" wrote in message
. ..
Which OS? What drivers?

It is difficult to install some drivers for Windows XP without using a
floppy. (It is supposed to be possible to slipstream things like RAID
drivers, but I have never done it.) Some boards with Intel chipsets may
not require added drivers to install the OS onto a single SATA drive,
though.

Vista permits you to load drivers from CD or USB flash drive, so you'd
need no floppy there.

I have a floppy drive in my Vista machine, but I rarely use it. For
utilities that must be run from a DOS-like OS (e. g., a BIOS update), I
use a bootable USB flash drive. A little old 256 MB drive has lots of
capacity for that purpose, while a bootable floppy generated by Vista
doesn't have enough space.


Return address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

"Ken" wrote in message
...
Is there any need for a floppy drive in a new system? If, for example, I
were to use an Intel mb that has its drivers on a floppy, as I have heard
that the DP35DPM does (go figure!), what would the workaround be? USB?
CD?

I figure I would rather not put in the extra cable if it is not needed.
The $20 expense is negligible.

Thanks
KK

Conor wrote:
In article , Ken says...
Is there any need for a floppy drive in a new system? If, for example,
I were to use an Intel mb that has its drivers on a floppy, as I have
heard that the DP35DPM does (go figure!), what would the workaround be?
USB? CD?

I figure I would rather not put in the extra cable if it is not needed.
The $20 expense is negligible.

Thanks
KK

I've not needed one for a few years now. BIOS updates come as windows
executables and there's no reason you can't set SATA to IDE mode,
install Windows then the SATA drivers and set the SATA back to SATA in
the BIOS.

Although Vista negates all of that because it'll look on a USB stick
for them.

Conor,

Please tell me more about installing Windows XP with a SATA drive, as I
was going to ask that question at some point. My present system uses an
IDE drive, but I would like to be able to just go all SATA. How does
one do it to install WinXP?

Thanks
KK

Ed Cregger wrote:
Tiger Direct sells an external USB connected 3.5" diskette drive that works
superbly. And you are right, some software vendors still resort to storing
their backup/startup files on diskettes.

Ed Cregger

------------------

"Bob Knowlden" wrote in message
. ..
Which OS? What drivers?

It is difficult to install some drivers for Windows XP without using a
floppy. (It is supposed to be possible to slipstream things like RAID
drivers, but I have never done it.) Some boards with Intel chipsets may
not require added drivers to install the OS onto a single SATA drive,
though.

Vista permits you to load drivers from CD or USB flash drive, so you'd
need no floppy there.

I have a floppy drive in my Vista machine, but I rarely use it. For
utilities that must be run from a DOS-like OS (e. g., a BIOS update), I
use a bootable USB flash drive. A little old 256 MB drive has lots of
capacity for that purpose, while a bootable floppy generated by Vista
doesn't have enough space.


Return address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

"Ken" wrote in message
...
Is there any need for a floppy drive in a new system? If, for example, I
were to use an Intel mb that has its drivers on a floppy, as I have heard
that the DP35DPM does (go figure!), what would the workaround be? USB?
CD?

I figure I would rather not put in the extra cable if it is not needed.
The $20 expense is negligible.

Thanks
KK

Ed,

There are four that are on the tigerdirect website: two by Sony, one by
diablotek, and one by Sabrent. Which of these are you using with
success? (I assume they don't need drivers to be loaded, just plug in
and go?

Thanks
KK

Ed Cregger wrote:
Tiger Direct sells an external USB connected 3.5" diskette drive that works
superbly. And you are right, some software vendors still resort to storing
their backup/startup files on diskettes.

Ed Cregger

------------------

"Bob Knowlden" wrote in message
. ..
Which OS? What drivers?

It is difficult to install some drivers for Windows XP without using a
floppy. (It is supposed to be possible to slipstream things like RAID
drivers, but I have never done it.) Some boards with Intel chipsets may
not require added drivers to install the OS onto a single SATA drive,
though.

Vista permits you to load drivers from CD or USB flash drive, so you'd
need no floppy there.

I have a floppy drive in my Vista machine, but I rarely use it. For
utilities that must be run from a DOS-like OS (e. g., a BIOS update), I
use a bootable USB flash drive. A little old 256 MB drive has lots of
capacity for that purpose, while a bootable floppy generated by Vista
doesn't have enough space.


Return address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

"Ken" wrote in message
...
Is there any need for a floppy drive in a new system? If, for example, I
were to use an Intel mb that has its drivers on a floppy, as I have heard
that the DP35DPM does (go figure!), what would the workaround be? USB?
CD?

I figure I would rather not put in the extra cable if it is not needed.
The $20 expense is negligible.

Thanks
KK


forgot to add the URL:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati... 0&image12.y=0

Ed Cregger wrote:

Tiger Direct sells an external USB connected 3.5" diskette drive that works
superbly. And you are right, some software vendors still resort to storing
their backup/startup files on diskettes.

But which will NOT be available until after the OS loads the USB driver.
I believe there are now some BIOSes that will boot from USB devices but
the OP never gave any details on his [proposed] system.

Ken wrote:

Is there any need for a floppy drive in a new system? If, for example,
I were to use an Intel mb that has its drivers on a floppy, as I have
heard that the DP35DPM does (go figure!), what would the workaround be?
USB? CD?

I figure I would rather not put in the extra cable if it is not needed.
The $20 expense is negligible.

Thanks
KK

If you need to flash the BIOS to update it (and only do that if the new
version actually gives you something you didn't have before), how are
you going to boot from a device other than your hard drive? You may be
able to configure the BIOS to boot from the CD drive but then you need
to create a bootable CD. It is likely that you won't be able to burn to
that CD when booting from it so you won't be able to save a copy of the
current BIOS as a backup in case the new BIOS is bad, faulty, or
incompletely copied to the EEPROM. It is not safe to perform a BIOS
update while Windows is running. What happens if Windows crashes while
the BIOS update is taking place? An incomplete BIOS burn can leave your
computer unbootable and you'll never be able to boot it again until you
replace the EEPROM chips (that have the firmware already burned in) or
replace the motherboard (which might not work with your current OS
install on your hard drives until you perform an in-place upgradge, aka
Repair install, if it works).

If you boot into Recovery Console mode, and if you are using a SATA or
SCSI hard drive, you will need to hit F6 on startup and later insert the
floppy to load the device drivers; otherwise, Windows will report that
no mass storage (hard drive) was found. I don't remember the prompt for
the driver disk letting you use a CD/DVD drive and you got stuck having
to use a floppy.

Are you going to carry around a CD (and in a jewel case) when all you
need is to transport a file under 1.2MB or 1.44MB in size? A floppy
fits in your shirt pocket. A CD does not not. There are those
mini-CDRs but they're overpriced. Nowadays users carry around USB thumb
drives (aka flash drives) to do the physical transport and to give them
lots more space and bigger files to save on it, but that requires
getting an OS to boot up sufficiently to load the USB drivers so that
thumb drive can be used. You could make the floppy bootable and carry
around a file to boot another host and get your file over on its drive
(provided it doesn't require OS-loaded drivers, too, to access that
drive).

If you need to boot into true DOS, are you going to do it using a CD?
Maybe if you have LOTS of other utilities that you want to run, like
anti-virus scanners, partitioning utilities, etc. What if it is the
CD/DVD device that is broken but you still need to start a boot into
DOS? If the hard drive is broken, you won't be able to load a DOS from
another partition on that hard drive using multibooting.

I hardly believe you need to be concerned about a $5 floppy drive when
considering the cost of building your own computer. However, I have
seen some pre-build makers ask for an exaggerated price on a floppy
upgrade (so I'd buy it separately and install it). You didn't bother to
mention if you are looking at a desktop or laptop computer. I'd
probably not bother with a floppy on a laptop, or get one that inserts
into a slot if I ever needed one later (but then, of course, your
problem and work is pended until you get the required hardware to
resolve your problem).