Can an external USB Floppy Boot the Computer?

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Guest

For reasons not worth going into, I would prefer a floppy drive to be
external USB. Is this just as good as internal for the kind of booting, disk
image copying, etc. I might want to do? Most of the time it would sit in a
drawer.
 
Only if your BIOS has a setting to allow you to boot from an external USB
device; otherwise it would have to be internal.
 
I have a Dell Optiplex that can be booted from an external USB floppy drive.
However, I have plenty of PC's that cannot do this. It depends upon the BIOS
of the machine. In general, you'll find that most older PC's will not.
 
kkf718 said:
For reasons not worth going into, I would prefer a floppy drive to be
external USB. Is this just as good as internal for the kind of
booting, disk image copying, etc. I might want to do? Most of the
time it would sit in a drawer.
Click to expand...


For copying, yes it's just as good.

For booting, it depends. Although some machines will boot from a USB drive,
most won't.
 
Sounds like both of you are saying the same thing. The good news is that my
computer is 2 days old. Dell E510 with latest BIOS. Sounds like my chances
are good. Ideally, I think I would set it to always boot up from the floppy
first, but typically it is not going to find the device (of media of course),
could just plug in the USB floppy drive and boot disk, reboot, and be ready
to go. Slower start up is not going to be an issue since I plan on having it
automatically start up early in the morning from BIOS Auto On, and shut down
automatically late at night with the Scheduler.
 
"SNIP
I plan on having it
automatically start up early in the morning from BIOS Auto On, and shut
down
automatically late at night with the Scheduler.

:
Click to expand...
You do realize that Windows XP won't be able to boot up from a floppy drive
since the file structure is extremely large and will not fit on one floppy.
Also, if you boot into DOS from a floppy you won't have scheduler to shut
the machine down. AND Windows XP can't be booted from a USB flash drive
either (as many other will attest to.)
 
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