[Jeffrey]

I am trying to stuff as many hard drives as possible in my new HTPC. How do you guys feel about foregoing the floppy? Is it needed as a boot drive in the case of failure of the primary boot drive? Could the DVD drive be used as a boot drive instead? Can you think of any other issues that would be relevant?


BTW, I'll still have floppy drives on other machines on my LAN, FWIW.


I use the FD on my first HTPC very little. I'd rather have a 160gb hard drive.

 

[mike_decock]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeffrey Is it needed as a boot drive in the case of failure of the primary boot drive? Could the DVD drive be used as a boot drive instead? Can you think of any other issues that would be relevant? BTW, I'll still have floppy drives on other machines on my LAN, FWIW.

I ran my systems for years without floppy drives until I started running RAID (you can't install the OS without the RAID drivers on a floppy disk). Other than that I never use them.


If you don't need a floppy to install the OS, you can definitely build it completely floppy-free. If you have another machine at your disposal with a floppy and a CD-R, you can easily make your own bootable CDs with whatever utilities you need to revive a failed boot drive.


Other than that, no issues, just benefits: Cleaner looks, faster boot times, no accidentally clicking on the A: and waiting 10 seconds for the computer to determine that there's no Disk in there, etc, etc.


-Mike...

 

[Brian Hampton]

Hey,


I don't have a floppy drive in my HTPC. I used one temp to format the hard drive but then it was no longer needed. I'm thinking of making a boot disc on CDR that will eliminate my use of floppies forever.


How do I get update files to my HTPC? I D/L them into my living room computer and then burn them onto CD.


On the other hand, how does eliminating a floppy disc enable you to install another hard drive?


-Brian

 

[simonduz]

My HTPC has no floppy.

I use a combo of CDRW, DVD, HD, and removable HD bay. You also can look at USB options if your PC has an available USB port.

 

[Alric]

None of my macs have had floppies for years..


Cheers,

 

[Lester Jacobs]

I built my PC from scratch about a year ago and at the time forgot to connect the floppy drive cable to the motherboard. Didn't discover the error until about a month ago when I needed to get data off a floppy for some reason....


Just shows you how unimportant the floppy has become now. I don't think you will lose much by dumping it.



Lester

 

[ShockValue]

..and even some systems don't need the floppy even when you DO use RAID. I guess windows had the drivers built in on mine...


If it's going to be a networked machine, and don't need the floppy at the initial install, then you can always share the floppy drive on another machine and just network to it if you needed info that way for some reason.

 

[Jeffrey]

Thanks guys. Just as I suspected, it seems the floppy is unecesasary. I think I will go without.



Quote:

Originally posted by Brian Hampton Hey, On the other hand, how does eliminating a floppy disc enable you to install another hard drive? -Brian

It frees up a 3.5" bay. I am using very compact Lian-Li cases, and could use the space for a 3rd 160gb drive.

 

[Bon]

I got so pissed off with floppies (failing to do even the simplest file transfers) a few weeks ago that I ripped the drive out of my system. Not sure whether it was the drive or the disks that were causing problems, but either way, my system (and my sanity!) are better without it there. Haven't looked back.


A Win98 installation CD + an old secondary hard drive are fine for the rare occasion when I need to boot from a drive other than my main one. (Far more reliable and fast, too!)


-Bon

 

[avekevin]

Quote:

Originally posted by Bon I got so pissed off with floppies (failing to do even the simplest file transfers) a few weeks ago that I ripped the drive out of my system. Not sure whether it was the drive or the disks that were causing problems, but either way, my system (and my sanity!) are better without it there. Haven't looked back. -Bon

There has been a bug in Windows NT going back to at least version 3.51 where it wouldn't always read floppies that had been formatted by Win 3.1/95/98/ME. It would see them as unformatted.


Since I dumped the Win 9x line, I haven't been able to test Win 2k and Xp (which is really NT 5.0 and 5.1, respectively) to see if the problem has been fixed. Seeing as M$ never acknowledged the bug, I would put money on that fact that it's still there.


Kevin

 

[Bon]

Kevin,


Thanks for that info. That could very well have been the problem I was having, as for some reason I recall that the discs did work fine under Win98 (or from a Win98 command prompt). Although even re-formatting them under WinXP seemed to cause some problems, from memory.


If I ever *really* need to use floppies again (which I hopefully won't ), I'll be sure to approach them with this in mind.


Thanks,


-Bon

 

[Li On]

Hi,


Anyone forget there exist USB floppy? On the other hand I want to know which motherboard supports boot from USB. TIA.


Btw, that's how sub-notebook works for a long time, boot from USB FD/CDROM if needed.


regards,


Li On

 

[Les_D]

The latest BIOS update for my MoBo gave me boot options for:


USB-ZIP/LS120

USB-FLASH (works with any USB connected flash drive or reader)

USB-HDD

USB-CD/DVD-ROM


I'm thinking of getting a 32MB ThumbDrive and making it bootable with PartitionMagic, Ghost, Anti-Virus, and whatever else I could use from DOS.


With a 128MB version you could even make a Lite98 install, however FLASH media has a limited re-write life so that might kill it off too soon.

 

[Wykat]

The only reason for me to have a floppy is to run Drive Image and to make a partition dumb to CD RW. Don't know if this can be done with a bootable CD ??? .


Wykat