No floppy connector in motherboards

[Beyond X]

When my new mobo arrived, I realized that there is no floppy connector
head. an A: drive is still a MUST in several operations including making
ERD (Emergency Repair Disk) for Win2K and ASR (Automated System
Recovery) for WinXP. I failed to find articles about how to repair or
restore those OSs without floppy disks. I don't think that USB-based
floppy drives can be of any help in emergency situations or can it?
Anyone knows how I can repair without A: drive?

 

[Beyond X]

Thanks for suggestion.
Some time ago I bought a USB floppy but it was broken internally before
I really used it, which makes me hesitate to buy another one.
(Recently I bought a floppy-card reader drive which is connected to
computer via both USB cable and floppy cable. This one is now installed
in another computer. Even if I move to the mobo without floppy
connector, it probably will not work without floppy connection.)
Before I buy another USB-floppy, I want to know which drive letter it
will be assigned with? (my USB flash card is assiened "I" drive, so I
think it will be assigned to another higher letter like"J", not "A".) If
this will be the case, first can I change it to "A" in BIOS? and
secondly when Windows CD specifically ask to put ERD in "Drive A", can I
somehow change the instruction to Drive "I" or "J"?

 

[Sid Elbow]

I would think that, as long as your new MB will boot from the USB-Floppy
(which it probably will) then you wouldn't have any problem running the ERD.

And as long as Windows recognises the USB-floppy drive (shouldn't be a
problem, mine is fine) you should be able to create the ERD in the first
place.

USB drives are not greatly expensive and it's worth having one around
anyway for he odd time you might need to read/write a floppy. I'd get
hold of one and try it out. I'm pretty sure it will be fine.

 

[Sid Elbow]

(Recently I bought a floppy-card reader drive which is connected to
computer via both USB cable and floppy cable. This one is now installed
in another computer. Even if I move to the mobo without floppy
connector, it probably will not work without floppy connection.)

It won't. The USB connector on those drives is for the card reader alone
and the floppy connector is for the floppy drive alone..

Before I buy another USB-floppy, I want to know which drive letter it
will be assigned with? (my USB flash card is assiened "I" drive, so I
think it will be assigned to another higher letter like"J", not "A".) If
this will be the case, first can I change it to "A" in BIOS? and
secondly when Windows CD specifically ask to put ERD in "Drive A", can I
somehow change the instruction to Drive "I" or "J"?

Windows should recognise it specifically as a floppy drive (not just any
usb removable media drive), assign it the "A" drive letter and treat it
like any other floppy drive (including allowing you to change floppies
without using the "Safely Remove" icon that you would need for other
removable media hardware). Mine works like that.

 

[Beyond X]

Sid,
To be sure, can I take your comment for it that you actually
(physically) installed a USB-floppy in your computer and saw appearing
Dive "A" in the Windows Explorer? Because you say Window 'should'
recognize it and assign it "A", I want to know you are saying it based

 

[Beyond X]

Sid,
Thank you very much for the thoughtful response and great information.
Now I feel assured to purchase a USB-floppy.
Thanks again.

 

[Sid Elbow]

It's good that you asked actually. I did physically install the
usb-floppy and it did show up as Drive-A in Explorer. The thing I forgot
was that the machine I was working on (which had no internal floppy
drive) was running XP rather than Win2K.

I tried it on a machine that was running Win2K and this is what I found:

- Win2K needed a device-driver to be installed - this had come with the
drive. (The driver was built into XP.)

- After installing the device driver, Win2K allocated letter B to the
drive. Not surprising because the machine had an internal floppy.

- I then turned off the internal floppy in the BIOS. Windows still
allocated drive letter B. I think this is probably because it was
originally detected as Drive-B and windows simply didn't re-allocate
when I turned of Drive-A so ...

- I then safely removed the drive, unplugged it from the usb port and
plugged it into a different port. The drive then came up as Drive-A.
I've no doubt that on a machine in which there was no internal floppy,
it would allocate drive-A in the first place

- I could find no way to reassign drive letters of the floppy drives.
Possibly a registry edit would do it.

- I could find no way to induce the ERD creation wizard to use anything
other than Drive-A.

Hope this helps.