- This topic has 4 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 22 years, 3 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I’m planning on buying a new computer in the next few weeks, and was wondering whether to add a floppy drive to it or not. Its only $25 CDN from the company that I’m plannin to buy it with.
I rarely use floppy disks nowadays, but I think I need them to create rescue disks and what not. I’m also taking this computer to university, so I’m not sure if I need floppies to transfer files between school computers and personal.
I also have an old 486 (from 1995) in my basement that has a floppy drive, and I was wondering if I could just plug that into my new computer if I really needed one, do they still use the same ports (and cables) on the motherboard?
I would get a floppy drive, they can be useful if you just want to transfer small documents from one computer to the other, and the other one doesn’t have an Internet connection or something. Also, they are cheap, and some drivers these days (such as keyboard and mouse drivers) do come on floppy disks. Although they arn’t as widely used as they once were, I think its still worth getting one.
You could probably use your old one, depending on the case. Some floppy drives don’t have a front panel. Instead the floppy panel is built into the case, like on my old packard bell. The entire drive comes out without having a front, so it would look messy on a newer pc without the drive slot built in. Don’t expect it to be too reliable though, since it was built almost 10 years ago (probably more).
I’d say, if you dont have the need to transfer files to a pc without an internet connection or a cd-rom, then you could go safely without the floppy. On the other hand, some components come with floppy disks only. For example, my motherboard has a RAID controller and when you reformat, you need to insert the floppy to copy a special RAID driver to the hard drive in order for Windows to see the RAID partition.
To be totally safe, you should get the floppy. Unless your positive that you won’t need it to install any kind of special drivers like a RAID driver. If you want a sleeker look you could get a USB floppy drive. I think you can boot from those the same as a regular drive.
unfortunately f0rbez is right, to be safe you should probably have a floppy handy. I personally try to avoid using mine at all costs unless it becomes absolutely necessary as a last resort. it’s 25 year old technology that hasnt been changed in as long, and it shows. very limited capacity, not very durable, etc etc. but yes, unfortunately it is still very widely used, so you’ll want to get one just in case. I like f0rbez’s suggestion about a USB floppy drive, especially if its an external drive, so you only have to plug it in if you need it.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.