need 3.5" floppy?

[djb23]

With new BIOSes that can boot from CD-ROMs, do you really need a 3.5" floppy drive any more?

Are there any brands to stay away from or that are noted as the better one? They are pretty much the same price on newegg.

Thanks for any info :)

[Johnny Knoxville]

they are all the same crap :D

[Spec_Ops2087]

personally I don't see the point of them anymore....

I never use mine...it is slow...and very annoying when accessing things...just get a CDRW and you got 700floppy disk combined....


Spec

[djb23]

I'd be curious to hear if anyone in particular has built a system without a floppy drive.

[FunkDaMonkMan]

I bet that most people with folding/SETI farms don't have floppys on a lot of their machines. They should just use one between them all. I have a floppy and use it for the boot up disk when I crash my HD, or when I want to run DOS.

They are all the same, but I spent the one extra dollar to get a SONY one instead of the generic one. Made me feel good or something lol, dunno.

[SkaGoatMaster]

hmmm, for all the price of them I'd get one, they could be handy for bootdisks, small file transfers. it's like $15-$20 for a FDD. you might as well add one.

[SickBoy]

I definitely don't think the CDRW is a replacement for the floppy, and for things like BIOS updates right now, a floppy is the only foolproof way.

I just put an CF card reader in my box and I must say I like it and can see it replacing the floppy though. I'll probably get an external CF drive too so I can use CF cards for both taking pics and for transferring files. The best thing is right now you can get them in any size from 4 MB to 256 MB. 256 MB is about as big as you'd ever need for quick transports of files....

sb

[Penguin4x4]

I like these ones (http://www.atechflash.com/)

[john240sx]

i only have an external floppy that i plug in to flash my BIOS. that's it. in fact, i don't even know where it is. lol.

[IFMU]

I think when Ive had the most up and running systems, which totalled about 6, I had 1 floppy to share among them all.

IMO, they suck and should be abolished. However, its the only way some give drivers out, and its the only way to really do a BIOS flash.
Granted you could burn a CD and do it, but why when odds are you wont use that CD again, or the bios. Just a waste of cash IMO.

If I were able to do something, Id dump them out like yesterdays trash. :D

IFMU

[Biohazard]

Im dumping The Floppy On my new Rig! And i'll get a Zip instead!!

[David]

I think they are very useful.

Not all PCs can boot off of CDs, and floppies are still useful for transfering data, say, to and from school.

If I was to replace my Floppy Drive with anything, it would be one of the LS240 drives. They use 120MB and 240MB disks, and can still read normal floppies.

David

[eab]

Only thing I see replacing the floppy is one of those usb flash hdd drives the size of your thumb. and also if the mobo makers support those so that you can boot off of them.

[Xaotic]

I use the LS-120s. They have another advantage as well, they write at approx 4X the speed of a FDD and read much faster. The only things I'm not completely happy with are the price of the media and the units behavior in power management events. Sometimes the BIOS or OS will cause drive letters to change in PM, but normally it's no problem.

The USB keys look nice, but so far I only know of one that's bootable and I wasn't as happy with it as I wanted to be. I'll probably wait another generation or two on the USB keys before I buy one.

[Penguin4x4]

LS-120? Link please! PLEASE!!!!!!!!:D

[Mike K]

I have my newer rig built without a floppy. I haven't needed it yet. For transferring files when I am not networked I just use a CD-RW, as I have one if both my machines now. I haven't had to flash my bios yet but I guess I can put it on a cd since they are so cheap now.

Here (http://www.imation.com/en_US/product.jhtml?Id=IM_FAM122) is a LS-120 drive.

[termight9]

What if you wanted to transfer a document from your main comp to a crappy outdated comp without internet access so that you could print it or work on it or someting. Would you want to burn a cd for that?

[WyrmMaster]

I dont have a floppy, havent for 6 months, havent missed it. I just need to get a cd-rw or two for bios flashing and stuff. Or just keep a multi session disk for that kind of stuff.

[stompah]

Originally posted by termight9
What if you wanted to transfer a document from your main comp to a crappy outdated comp without internet access so that you could print it or work on it or someting. Would you want to burn a cd for that? CDRW


I dont have any CDRW media as I bought bunches of CDRs for really cheap so conserving them isnt nessecary.

Maybe someone could make a 'small media reader' (compact flash, memory stick, etc...) that runs off the floppy connector? The Atechflash didnt say how its readers connected to the system.

[SBeaver]

I have two floppys and none of which is in use.
I just use them when installing OS but in XP you don't even need that.
My floppy bay is occupied by an intak fan that cools my hdd so when I use it on ma main rig I just put it on top of the chassis.

[Penguin4x4]

Originally posted by stompah

The Atechflash didnt say how its readers connected to the system.

Internal USB Motherboard Header or External USB port.

[Penguin4x4]

Here is the article I found this product from (http://www.3dxtreme.org/buildingpc.shtml). E-mailed Dean Nottis, the article writer. Newegg has them for $40. Pics:

http://65.119.30.151/productimage/20-176-002-03.JPG
http://65.119.30.151/productimage/20-176-002-02.JPG

[Captain Slug]

Floppy drive are still handy for a main rig in case you need to do a blind BIOS recovery. OR if you need to make more boot CDs. OR if you're moving data to-and-from libraries, schools, college classes, etc.

But all of my secondary system a devoid of floppy drives since I've learned how to make bootable recovery CDs for them that include fdisk and all required drivers.

[badvector]

We have a few LS-120's at work that I installed in some of the computers there. I don't use them that much but they seem like a decent piece of equipment. It seems like they never really took off though. Nice idea but I think the Zip drives beat them to the punch. The nice thing about the 120's are that they read a floppy in addition to their own 120Mb disks. Here is a link I found for the panasonic. It doesn't look like these are being made much if at all for home p.c.'s If I could pick one up cheap enough, I would probably consider it. I saw them on pricewatch for around $30 (factory pulls without a faceplate).

linky here (http://www.mke.panasonic.co.jp/en/device/superdisk/superdisk934.html)

[Bigsexy]

Originally posted by djb23
With new BIOSes that can boot from CD-ROMs, do you really need a 3.5" floppy drive any more?


I don´t have one - and I never missed it!

[Crazy Jayhawk]

I use mine fairly often.

[Causality]

Am I understanding this correctly, that Iomega now makes/owns superdisk? I remember deciding between the superdisk or the zip disk and thinking how superior the superdisk was, since it could read floppies and had more memory (back when 100mb zips were tops).

[ElGriton]

Originally posted by djb23
I'd be curious to hear if anyone in particular has built a system without a floppy drive.

I haven't put one in the last few rigs I have built.