Do I need a Floppy Drive at all?

[eVaoVe]

I have no real use for Floppys but do other items require a floppy? Does flashing your BIOS require a floppy or can I just use a CD?

 

[nageov3t]

they only cost a couple dollars. unless you want to put something else in the 3.5" bay, you may as well.

I'd recomend at least a usb floppy, though. it comes in handy for loading drivers and running diagnostic programs.

 

[natto fire]

I used to think I would need to install a floppy drive to flash my BIOS. Then I found a website to do the same with with a boot CD. CDs cost about the same as floppies. Floppies are worthless, the drives are even worse...

Edit: Just realized people are going to post in this thread "Well you need them to load some SATA drivers"
WRONG! They can be slipstreamed with any Windows XP installation. Face it, floppy drives are worthless.

 

[Mik3y]

Originally posted by: loki8481
they only cost a couple dollars. unless you want to put something else in the 3.5" bay, you may as well.

I'd recomend at least a usb floppy, though. it comes in handy for loading drivers and running diagnostic programs.

 

[nageov3t]

Edit: Just realized people are going to post in this thread "Well you need them to load some SATA drivers"
WRONG! They can be slipstreamed with any Windows XP installation. Face it, floppy drives are worthless.

it's still a lot easier to do it with a floppy, IMO.

 

[eVaoVe]

What's a USB floppy?

 

[LifeStealer]

An external floppy that connects via USB

 

[grrl]

Originally posted by: LifeStealer
An external floppy that connects via USB

Why bother? Get an internal and forget about it. As loki8481 pointed out, certain things about easier with a floppy.

Who wants to bother slipstreaming and XP or 2k disk to load SATA drivers? What a waste of time.

 

[lenjack]

You don't need it, but it's handy and nice to have.

 

[caz67]

The only time, i use my floppy is when i Format XP and need to install RAID drivers. I have now added them to my slipstream XP disk..

 

[Algere]

Originally posted by: loki8481

Edit: Just realized people are going to post in this thread "Well you need them to load some SATA drivers"
WRONG! They can be slipstreamed with any Windows XP installation. Face it, floppy drives are worthless.

it's still a lot easier to do it with a floppy, IMO.

Then again it's more convenient to slipstream SATA drivers, service packs, hot fixes, etc. instead of having to download and/or install all of them over again.

 

[CJP]

I saw a floppy drive that had various flash card slots in it as well so if I put a floppy in my next system it'll probably be one of these.

 

[Sheriff]

Need=No but highly desirable for other things IMO (Flashing, Ghosting, working in DOS, adding drivers, and other things )

 

[Zepper]

If you don't have one, you will almost immediately develop a severe need of one - Murphy's Law of Advancing Technology...

.bh.

:sun:

 

[Cheetah8799]

Originally posted by: Captain_Howdy
I used to think I would need to install a floppy drive to flash my BIOS. Then I found a website to do the same with with a boot CD. CDs cost about the same as floppies. Floppies are worthless, the drives are even worse...

Edit: Just realized people are going to post in this thread "Well you need them to load some SATA drivers"
WRONG! They can be slipstreamed with any Windows XP installation. Face it, floppy drives are worthless.

Slipstreaming is too much work for simply installing some SATA or raid drivers... All you have to do is temporarily plug in a floppy drive until you are done installing drivers, then unplug it and make the changes to the bios to disable it.... way easier!

 

[piasabird]

I have seen some devices from Mitsumi that read both flash memory and a floppy so they take up the same amount of space. I think they were both FDD and USB.

 

[Zepper]

If I'm not mistaken, the BIOS boot-block still requires a floppy to recover from a blown BIOS flash attempt - no CD booting included. Of course, you could just have a flashed BIOS chip flown in...
.bh.

 

[Corporate Thug]

i would use a windows based flasher anyway

or maybe a usb memory stick?

 

[BHeemsoth]

Originally posted by: CJP
I saw a floppy drive that had various flash card slots in it as well so if I put a floppy in my next system it'll probably be one of these.

Link?

 

[lrmat]

slipstreaming does sound like a hassle just to load sata drivers but!!!!!!! since i just built a rig another reason for slipstreaming is so xp can see a drive over 130gigs. i have a sata 200gig drive of which 67gigs are gone until a friend in IT can let me borrow a copy of partition magic to correct this.

slipstream xp, my friend.

 

[Sideswipe001]

It's not hard and time consuming to slipstream. Sheesh, I spent an hour to make a CD with SP2 and every device driver I could think of and fit on a CD. Now I have VIA/nForce/Intel drivers all already loading with the OS install, as well as NIC drivers, SATA, a few SCSI drivers, and a RAID controller or two. Oh, and video drivers- though they are generally always out of date.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: rpbri2886

Originally posted by: CJP
I saw a floppy drive that had various flash card slots in it as well so if I put a floppy in my next system it'll probably be one of these.

Link?

I have one of these. It's great. The cards are all USB 2.0 and the floppy uses the standard floppy connector.

 

[GnomeCop]

I recently ditched my floppy drive.

I slipstremed some sata drivers onto my XP cd just in case... though I never use sata raid anyways. My sata drives are detected by ICHR5 like normal IDE drives if I'm not raiding them

I can flash my mobo bios in windows, I can even flash my video card bios in windows.
Optical drive firmware is all updated in windows.

Next time I see a USB floppy drive free after rebate I may still pick one up, for the odd times when I want to use those Drive fitness tests or KillDick to wipe my HDs. But that rarely if ever happens.

 

[sandorski]

I didn't have a floppy for a few years, but every once in awhile I ran into a problem that required me to borrow one. The main reason I didn't have one is that I had a full tower case and the floppy cable wouldn't reach from the drive to the controller socket, but I bought a midtower in Jan and decided to grab a floppy just in case something came up.

For the most part they are useless, but still nice to have for the occassional need.

 

[duragezic]

No. Didn't put in a floppy since I built this computer. I guess I could put it in in a dire need but bootable CDs tend to do it!