Must I have a floppy drive?

[ceolstan]

I recently built a computer. I've enjoyed it; it works great, except that I was going to port some data from a mac to my pc via floppy and I discovered the floppy drive is DOA.

I know the diskette was a pc diskette, so that's not the problem. I checked the connections on the fdd. The drive then read one disk, a second,and then refused to read more. It gave me the message that the disk wasn't formatted. After doing a bit of reading around, I found out that this means the drive is bad.

Now, here's the thing. Do I really need a floppy drive? I have a desire to update my BIOS eventually. To do so, the instructions indicate that I ought to have a bootable floppy. However, I didn't boot my pc from a floppy when I built it; I inserted my Windows CD.

I think I'll probably pull a working floppy out of an old machine (we've several around the house) and put it into the new machine. However, I'm just curious as to how necessary the floppy really is.

Many thanks.

--ceolstan

[mrmister1]

A floppy is not incredibly important anymore. It is important for a couple of things like updating your BIOS, as you said, if you mobo doesn't support doing it from Windows. But floppies are under $10. If you do have extra floppies lying around then you should be able to use them in the new machine without a problem.

[bailey]

I have not used the flopy drive much now that I have a network, but still I will not build a computer without one yet

[ghost2003]

My sister doesnt have one any she wants me to put one in. So you should probly installing one, its very cheap anyways, never know when youll need it.

[scott_d]

I dont have one in, the only thing i use it for is loading my SATA drivers when i install or repair XP
I say get one that works then leave it in a drawer somewhere for when you need it, no need for that extra ribbon cable and stuff in there.
HTH

[edfair]

Up until the last month I always insisted on a floppy on anything I built or had. But I ran across an incredible deal on IBM netvista machines, and although they have floppies they can't boot from them.
So with the aid of Nero Burning Rom and another machine I created 98 boot CD with full support and DOS 6.22 boot CD with full support, and both have everything I need to get a network up and running, On those machines I have no need for a floppy.

Originally posted by edfair Up until the last month I always insisted on a floppy on anything I built or had. But I ran across an incredible deal on IBM netvista machines, and although they have floppies they can't boot from them. So with the aid of Nero Burning Rom and another machine I created 98 boot CD with full support and DOS 6.22 boot CD with full support, and both have everything I need to get a network up and running, On those machines I have no need for a floppy.

I have built quite a few basic machines without floppies, I also just use Nero to create boot disks when I need them.

[i486]

You need a floppy to load third party SATA or SCSI drivers when you install windows NT, 2000 or XP.

[glc]

If you are a hobbyist, it's no big deal opening the case and hooking up a floppy when you need it, so if you don't want a floppy for esthetic reasons, no big deal, just have one in a drawer somewhere for when you do need it. Most new motherboards support booting from USB, so a USB floppy is an option - but it's comparatively costly.

[Punked Out Comp]

Although floppies can come in very handy for quickly transfering small files or documents from one computer to another and they are very very cheap, so it makes sence to get one, they arent totally nessacerry and u could technically survive w/o one but whats the point? the're extrememly cheap (just over $5) and very convienient.
Just my opinion though.

[Hi Ho]

My floppy says that same thing about it not being formatted on a lot of disks. Is it really bad or is there another problem. I rarely use it but when I have to it is difficult because i have to go through a lot of disks untill I can find one that works. All of them are new by the way.

[dave computer]

I don't have a floppy and do just fine. I just use a cdrw for transferring files.

[deathonastick]

What are you gonna do when the Floppy Drive Police come to your house?

J/K