To Floppy or Not to Floppy?

I'm building a new machine from the ground up, and am trying to decide whether or not I need a floppy. I certainly don't want one, but I'm wondering if there might be some off instance where Vista or the mobo would require a floppy boot.

Well, to be honest, my previous desktop builds all included floppies because I used them to flash the BIOS and install RAID drivers.

However, I was forced to use a thumb drive to flash the BIOS on my laptop and that took some HW.... I used some HP utility to format a USB thumb drive as a boot disk so I could load up a new BIOS. I have NOT tested a thumb drive with the installation of SATA drivers though...

... or just keep it out of the boot list in the BIOS so it doesn't slow down the boot process.

I haven't had a floppy in any of my pc's either in at least 6 years and have never needed one in that time.

I agree with StevieD, as long as you have one floating around somewhere in your house, just install it if and when you need it.

Get one of these things:

Floppy/Flash combo drive

My poppy drive is the best investment I ever made. Cooking up heroin is kind of a pain in the ass, but it's sooooooo worth it.

I'd get a floppy disk drive. When i had my computer built to my custom spec, I made a point of having a FDD. There abt $5-10, or ~20 for one that includes a media card reader on its faceplate.

Some hardware needs floppies for flashing, bios updates, and for windows xp drivers if you don't slipstream them.

Also very useful, when your trying out DOS apps, as its a waste to burn a new CD-R every time e.g. memtest, dban, ms-dos, wd diagnostics, windows memory diagnostic, nvidia card bios flasher

So far, all my builds use a floppy. They seem so tiny in the information that they store, yet there are lots of times that I find one handy. Whether its flashing a BIOS, running memtest, or just transfering a small file from one computer to another, I think they still have their uses.

RAID drivers. Nuf said

Bingo...get a USB floppy. Its easy, cheap, & bootable. Sony (and perhaps others) even make 'em that read/write @ 2X so they're only 1/2 as slow. ...and when you don't want to look at its yesteryear-ness you can instantly put it away in a closet. ...but for RAID, etc. drivers you may find you need a floppy so I'd say a USB 2X floppy drive could be a good addition to your arsenal.

There is realy no need for FDD, i didnt used it in last 5 years.
Older windows do need driver for some SATA/SCSI/RAID controler they dont know (if you want to instal system on it), but this can be fixed adding driver directly on instalation CD (for example nlite can do it for you).

Its almost simple, nlite will extract instalation files from CD and you can modify many things in it, add or remove components/ etc then save changes, burn it and you are ready to go.

I haven't actually used a floppy disk, floppy drive, or anything floppy related in about five years. They hold the minimal amount of information, and are very easy to corrupt. If my computer takes a dump on me, and needs drives or a boot disk, I'll go to a brick and mortar and pick one up.

You know, it's funny, I can remember when I thought 3.5" floppies were the shiz-nasty. This was around the time they were displacing 5.25" floppies (ie: the ones that were actually floppy). Must have been about 15 years ago now. I used to use floppies all the time, but with the advent of email attachments, cheap CD burners, and (best of all) USB flash drives, I see no place for them. Outmoded is an understatement.

I do have some old documents on floppies that I'd like to recover. God only knows if the information is still intact. I'll make that my project for tomorrow...

using raid arrays/ide/sata cards for system disk?

yes = get one
no = loose it

usb sticks for everything else

Check out the mobo your going to buy, see if its have a windows bios update. And if your going to use Vista then you don't need a floppy for raid drivers. You can just use a thumbdrive flashdrive w/e u wanna call it.

I'll be running Vista, so all the more reason to shun the floppies. In fact, last night was the first time I've used a floppy in years. This thread reminded me that I had some old documents saved to a few floppies I stashed away back when Clinton was president. I jumped on my brother's machine, the only floppy comp in the house.

He got a laugh out of the whole thing. He's had his computer for just shy of two years now, and apparently I'm the first one to use the floppy drive. They worked though, for what that's worth. For the better part of a decade I've had those floppies thrown in the back of a drawer, and they worked. LoL...it took about a minute a megabyte to rip data from the floppy to the desktop.

...I can't help but feel a pang of regret. Those three disks were the last remnants of a bygone era, and now they're resting comfortably in the bottom of my trash can. Oh well, such is the nature of progress.

When it's going to save my life? Is there some Chuck Norris edition floppy drive that I'm unaware of?

it depends on if you will ever need to flash a bios or something like that from it and thats the only option and i would try to salvage one from an old rig instead of wasting money if your motherboard supports it go for a flashdrive since they have alot more storage and are 1) smaller and 2)work with any computer that has a usb port which is 99.999999% of them

Floppy Drives are kinda like a spare tire in the trunk. You don't need it .....well..... until you need it. I haven't used one in at least 12 years, but 13 years ago I did get a flat on a lonely 2 laner, out of cell phone range and in -10 degree weather. Sure was glad I had that spare tire then.

I had a friend build an all SATA XP system with no floppy a year or so ago and when he tried to load XP SP1 he couldn't ..... no floppy available to load the SATA driver so he called me and we flew over to Compuseless and grabbed one of those 20-in-1 card reader / floppy combos and a round floppy cable....we left with change from a $20 bill.

To me its like building a $3,000 gaming system w/o buying a UPS. "I never needed it in 5 years" sounds kinda hollow when lightning strikes or a branch falls on the power line outside ya house and fries the bugger.

People. USB floppy drives are cheap. It's not even worth the discussion. Sheesh. Get one, you may need it. If you don't its not like you wasted $100. If you don't ever use it you'll have an unused USB floppy...the world won't end.

I'm a fan of the combo drive. Got mine as a combo deal for about $20. Prior to this last build I hadn't used floppy in more than 5 years, but with Raid and some apps like memtest it is a simple thing to install and run by floppy. Yes, it can be done other ways but I am a simple caveman who doesn't like wasting time figuring out how to avoid the floppy.