Any need for floppy drive in a new system?

[Ofnuts]

If MoBo supports it, the rest is basically free no matter how
you look at it.

Still takes up space in the external bays... which may be scarce in a
smallish box. One solution is to keep it in one if the internal HDD bays
and open the box in the very few cases it's needed (installs or else);
or to connect it for the installs and remove it once done.

Bd.

 

[Ofnuts]

Think of this way: How often have you used the spare tire and jack in
your car? Maybe never. Maybe once in 10 years. But you feel
comfortable knowing it is there in case of an emergency. If someone
said you could buy the car without a spare tire and jack to save all of
$10, would you buy it that way or get the spare?

But this is for a desktop PC, so the flat tire happens in the garage and
I would only need a jack and spare tire somewhere in the house. As it
happens, the PCs we take far from home (ie, laptops) have lost their
floppy drives a long while ago.

 

[VanguardLH]

But this is for a desktop PC, so the flat tire happens in the garage and
I would only need a jack and spare tire somewhere in the house.

Of the times that I discovered that I had a flat, it was when I went out
in the morning to drive to work when I noticed the car sagging. Flats
are not blowouts.

As it happens, the PCs we take far from home (ie, laptops) have lost
their floppy drives a long while ago.

And you've never seen any posts from laptop users that found they needed
a floppy drive? If you haven't, Google.

 

[Ed Cregger]

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

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

I'm using the Sabrent, all they had when I bought mine. It works flawlessly.
Yep, no driver necessary, just plug and go. And, it shows up as a 3.5"
diskette drive in My Computer with Win XP SP2.

Ed Cregger

 

[Ed Cregger]

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.

 

[Conor]

I feel I should point out that not all motherboards with SATA have that
option.
It may not be so much of an issue with modern motherboards but older ones
with SATA don't always have it.

My 3 year old Asus with only SATA150 does as did the Asrock it
replaced.

 

[Conor]

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.

There are plenty of tools to create a BIOS backup image and virtually
every motherboard can be flashed from within Windows.

I find it ****ing hilarious you're bleating on about one of the main
reasons for having a floppy being flashing a BIOS and all the woe that
can happen if you don't use one whilst forgetting the simple fact that
the floppy disc IS THE MOST UNRELIABLE MEDIA THERE IS.

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;

Or go into the BIOS and set the SATA channel to IDE mode...

Lets put it this way. I build systems - lots of systems. I've not had
to use a floppy drive in over half a decade. On computers where I've
tried to use the floppy drive, it's invariably ****ed.

 

[Conor]

Think of this way: How often have you used the spare tire and jack in
your car? Maybe never. Maybe once in 10 years. But you feel
comfortable knowing it is there in case of an emergency. If someone
said you could buy the car without a spare tire and jack to save all of
$10, would you buy it that way or get the spare?

But a floppy drive that hasn't been used is likely to have the read
heads so full of shite it won't work.

 

[Conor]

And you've never seen any posts from laptop users that found they needed
a floppy drive? If you haven't, Google.

**** me, come into the ****ing 21st Century will you?

Floppies are shite. They ****ign slow, have sod all capacity and the
data gets corrupted on them if the wind changes direction.

 

[Don Phillipson]

Is there any need for a floppy drive in a new system? . . .

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

1. Test question: did anyone send you in the last year or two
data saved on a floppy, or did you put data on a floppy for anyone?
2. Belt and braces policy. Every component (including CD bootable
drive and hard drive) is going to fail sooner or later: but we cannot
know if this will be before or after we scrap the PC in question: so
a floppy drive offers another way of booting, if ever needed.

 

[1stPrime]

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

not that i can think of these days, except an external, but really no
use. unless you have some ole games you still want to play.

 

[Ken]

fwibbler said the following on 4/14/2008 9:57 AM:

By contrast, the MSI KM4M-V did not have it and neither did the ASUS A7V8X
or the ASUS A7S8X-MX.

:-D

Same with my Asus P4PE. Not there.

 

[VanguardLH]

**** me, come into the ****ing 21st Century will you?

Floppies are shite. They ****ign slow, have sod all capacity and the
data gets corrupted on them if the wind changes direction.

Yes, we all need a 650MB CD or 4.7GB DVD or 16MB thumb drive to store a
30KB data file. Whether you need a floppy drive is not really your
choice. Someone else or some program will get you stuck needing one.

 

[VanguardLH]

But a floppy drive that hasn't been used is likely to have the read
heads so full of shite it won't work.

Is the snow shovel in your garage unusable simply because you haven't
had enough snow to shovel over the several years since you bought it?
You have a weird setup if the heads in your floppy drive are evaporating
or accumulating shit when nothing is rubbing against them.

 

[VanguardLH]

There are plenty of tools to create a BIOS backup image and virtually
every motherboard can be flashed from within Windows.

A really stupid idea and only practiced by boobs. You cannot interrupt
the BIOS burn process since not enough of the firmware code may be
written at the point of interruption to allow the computer to boot
thereafter. When flashing the BIOS, do it from single-tasking DOS and
to be safe have the computer connected to a UPS. In Windows, all it
would take is some service, background process, or crapware to hang or
crash Windows during the burn to interrupt the process.

 

[Rat River Cemetary]

The simplest way is to set the channel the SATA drive is on to IDE in the
BIOS. That way, you can install XP without needing to install the SATA
controller drivers. You can then install the drivers once Windows is up
and running then change the SATA channel back to SATA in the BIOS.

Yea, that's what I do except I never install the SATA driver and set it
back to SATA mode. What benefit does SATA mode give besides NCQ?

 

[Rat River Cemetary]

Same with my Asus P4PE. Not there.

You sure? Not all mb's call it IDE mode. Might say enhanced mode or
something like that. My Asus P5K has it and so does my Asrock
Dual-Sata2. I never bother with installing SATA drivers and on my P5K I
only use SATA, including for DVD-RW.

 

[Rat River Cemetary]

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.

A blank floppy costs way more than a blank cdr so they are not only not
needed they are also a waste of money.

 

[Paul]

You sure? Not all mb's call it IDE mode. Might say enhanced mode or
something like that. My Asus P5K has it and so does my Asrock
Dual-Sata2. I never bother with installing SATA drivers and on my P5K I
only use SATA, including for DVD-RW.

Intel explains what they do, on page 11 here.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/manuals/252671.htm

The default Microsoft driver, understands the I/O mapped option.
IRQ14 and IRQ15 and two drives per ribbon cable, has been
around for a while. And that legacy mode, is all that some
(no longer supported) OSes understand. Some of the first ICH5
motherboards, had settings that allowed flipping to legacy mode,
so a new motherboard could boot Win98 if needed, using nothing
but the Microsoft driver.

The second way to do it (suitable for when more than four disks
are involved), is to move the same interface into the PCI space.
As offsets to a base address register (BAR). There is no longer
a four drive limitation, due to the fixed way the other I/O
mapped thing was set up.

WinXP SP1 has a PCI address space capable driver, to take
care of that "native mode" of operation. Using that, you could
have six hard drives on the ICH5.

Later Intel chipsets seem to have preserved some of those features
(at least if you look at the Southbridge datasheets, they make it
sound like legacy operation is still possible), but the BIOS
presentation may no longer be as friendly or useful.

Paul

 

[Dazza]

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 always install a floppy disc drive for 1 major reason....

How to create and use a password reset disk for a computer in a domain in
Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306214/en-us

How to log on to your Windows XP-based computer if you forget your password
or if your password expires
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321305/en-us

Its the first thing I do now after a new build & install of windows.
The hours spent trying to avoid a complete reinstall & the resultant data
loss or attempting to use password recovery tools are not worth the lousy
$20
(speaking from personal experience)

Dazza