Building PC, to floppy or not to floppy?

[Doug Ramage]

You can add the drivers to a custom WinXP CD. In fact, this is the
smart way to do it since you can add all your drivers, plus you can set
the switches so that you don't have to babysit the install.


Partition Magic will recover from the install CD. Ghost is crap unless
you do enterprise deployment, but the image disc itself is bootable.

I have PM, Drive Image, Ghost etc on a bootable cd-rom.

But I have a client who sends me her a/cs and payroll on a floppy disk.

 

[NoRemorse]

Did I miss the part where the original poster was building a laptop?

<sarcasm>Yes, you did.</sarcasm> Did I say he was building a laptop? I was
citing an example for a situation in which a floppy drive is useful. It's a
good fallback low-tech solution for certain data transfer situations.

 

[jaeger]

<sarcasm>Yes, you did.</sarcasm> Did I say he was building a laptop? I was
citing an example for a situation in which a floppy drive is useful. It's a
good fallback low-tech solution for certain data transfer situations.

Laptops are different, and not really relevant here. For a laptop that
interfaces with a variety of systems then yes, possibly, a floppy is
useful. But not on a desktop.

 

[Dave Catchpole]

Laptops are different, and not really relevant here. For a laptop that
interfaces with a variety of systems then yes, possibly, a floppy is
useful. But not on a desktop.

Thats crap, he's on about the fact the college Desktop only had a floppy
drive free so he could transfer his data..

Thats the relevance..

Dave

 

[jaeger]

Thats crap, he's on about the fact the college Desktop only had a floppy
drive free so he could transfer his data..

Thats the relevance..

No, it is not relevant to compare what is probably an obsolete machine
to one being built today from new parts.

 

[R_Supp]

Name one.

It can be embarrasing to save your MYOB stuff to a USB device then have your
accountant tell you he can`t use it and in the meantime you are paying in
excess of a hundred bucks an hour for his services. Kind of makes the floppy
drive look good.

 

[R_Supp]

Laptops are different, and not really relevant here. For a laptop that
interfaces with a variety of systems then yes, possibly, a floppy is
useful. But not on a desktop.

Obviously you don`t own a lappy. You don`t know what you are missing. Then
again, if you don`t leave the house you wouldn`t need a lappy.

 

[me]

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a
LAN and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I
should include one? Thanks.
-- Scott

Floppies are dirt cheap and if you don't install it you will need it, sure
as hell.

 

[bp]

I haven't used one in almost 4 years, there is nothing you need it for.

except for installing drivers for my RAID controllers I haven't needed
one. NOw if MS would just let you load them from a CD, during the
install, I could get rid of my floppy but Noooo they insist on a
floppy

 

[bp]

You can add the drivers to a custom WinXP CD.

How please?

 

[bp]

Did I miss the part where the original poster was building a laptop?

here try this

Copying a paper (five minutes from the deadline) from my PC to a
school computer, so I can print it out.

 

[bp]

No, you do not! This is no longer 1994. Any BIOS can be flashed from a
CDROM/RAMDRIVE. Yes, even the new Asus ones that have the .exe file.

DUDE give it up. There are reasons for a floppy.

 

[bp]

For less than $10 why not do it up? You never know when you'll need it eg. BIOS flashing, Win98 startup disk etc. and if the time comes and you don't

HeHe did anyone notice that since the start of this thread the price
of a floppy drive as dropped from 20 to less than 10.00?
Can we start a thread on new cars ? I need a good deal.

 

[bp]

Why? So far not one person has offered a valid reason.

To who you?

Yes you can work around them but it can be far easier to just have it
from the start.

 

[Dave Catchpole]

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.
-- Scott

At the end of the day, Apple Macs haven't had a floppy drive for years now,
so I'm sure you could work around it somehow..

Dave

 

[Snickers]

Name one.

There are Excel and Word files I work on at home and at my job. The
computers at work have floppy drives and no cd writing capability. I
need to have a floppy disk (and drive) to transfer these files back
and forth.

 

[Matt]

And yet again, no reason is given.

No you give it up. I just gave a reason for using a floppy drive. (See
thread above)

"What if a friend or client in business hands you a floppy disk with
important files on it?"

What do you do with it?

 

[Matt]

I had blue screens in XP that erased my flashcard in the process. This has
happened 3 times. Reinstalled OS and drivers took care of the bsods.

ken k

What drivers? There are none required for USB in XP.

 

[Stephan Grossklass]

But Oh! Do you trust floppies like you do CompactFlash cards! You shouldn't.

CF cards are not robust enough. Pull one out of a cardreader while it's
being read, and chances are pretty good it'll be fried afterwards. Had
that happen just a few days ago with a relatively new 256 meg card.
Fortunately it was possible to get most images off (phew), a number of
sectors apparently in the FAT were unreadable. After trying to reformat
a couple of times, the card is now totally unusable. Try the same with a
(preferably write protected) floppy - the OS might crash, but apart from
that...

Floppies can get erased, corrupted by the slightest dirt and are generally
unreliable.

New floppies are often of low quality, it seems, but many older ones
still work just fine. Apart from that, these days a floppy is not the
right place to store valuable data anyway, if only for the lack of
capacity. But for things like BIOS updates (Windows based mobo bios
flashers, who invented that crap?), emergency boot disks or driver disks
(ever tried to install Windows XP on some storage controller it doesn't
know? the setup will only accept drivers from the A: drive!) they're
still useful. Cost for a floppy drive is pretty much nil these days,
there are tons of used ones available.

Stephan

 

[jaeger]

But for things like BIOS updates (Windows based mobo bios
flashers, who invented that crap?), emergency boot disks or driver disks
(ever tried to install Windows XP on some storage controller it doesn't
know? the setup will only accept drivers from the A: drive!) they're
still useful.

Oh for god's sake, this is all untrue. You don't need a floppy to
update a BIOS or install SCSI/RAID drivers at setup.