Help me find a suitable USB floppy drive

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I've reached a delimma. I need an external USB floppy drive, in order to install XP (with the SATA drivers) onto a laptop. I was just going to go out and buy one, but then I came across this . Apparently, in all of MS's wisdom, XP's text-mode setup only works with SPECIFIC external USB floppies, and not all USB floppies. Go freaking figure.

So now, as time goes by and mfgs change their units, I have to struggle with the task of finding one of the older units that is still supported by XP.

Does anyone know where to find one of these units, or a store where they guarantee the units that they sell, will work with XP setup for F6 driver installation?

Or does anyone know how to hack txtsetup.sif to add in the device codes of alternative USB drives. (Hex editor? Is it compressed?)

 

[DaveSimmons]

I've never needed to, but can you "slipstream" the drivers onto a copy of the OS CD/DVD?

(Google and/or search the OS forum)

 

[Blazer]

if the bios will look for a usb device it should see a usb memory stick.

 

[mpilchfamily]

I agree. Get a nice cheap flash drive and coppy the driver disk to the flash drive. The drivers can be down;paded from the manufactures web page.

 

[themisfit610]

No. That doesn't work for XP. Floppy drives only supported by the text mode driver install.

My advice? Slipstream in the drivers, and XP SP3. It's VERY simple. Use nLite.

Seriously. Don't buy a floppy drive

~MiSfit

 

[vailr]

http://driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/
The ones you'd need to slipstream (onto XP-SP3) are: "DriverPack MassStorage" + "DriverPack Chipset".
However, I'd think that installing XP-SP3 on a laptop should work without adding any extra drivers.
Do you already attempt the installation & fail?
The only need for slipstreaming extra SATA drivers should be: for installing on a pair of Raided hard drives (which are only found on desktop machines).

 

[themisfit610]

Or if the BIOS is running the SATA controller in AHCI or RAID mode (neither of which actually requre RAID, or more than one hard drive). I did this exact thing with my desktop in both XP and Vista, as it improves hard drive performance a bit.

~MiSfit

 

[RebateMonger]

If you read through the reviews on Newegg.com for USB floppy drives, you'll find references to USB floppy drives that work with the XP driver install routines (F6).