The Need for Floppys?

[TheFocusElf]

I posted a PC build before and thank the community for its help in determining what was termed a Bleeding Edge system. I am starting to amass the components, but came across a posting somewhere recently that suggested to install BIOS/Drivers I need to have a floppy drive PRE-OS install?! Is this true in all cases, some or most, or none I suppose.

I don't want to have everything connected and good to go and get rejected by something so stupid as a 7.00 component, and at the same time, I don't want to or NEED to have a 1.44mb drive in my system unless it is necessitated by the build itself.

Should I look for any specific info? Simply call the manufacturer of the mobo of choice, or... what?

 

[Merlin]

It depends on your motherboard, most no longer need a floppy drive, but some still provide a floppy with drivers ( such as my EVGA 78i mobo , it had a floppy with drivers ) but there was also a disk as well
You should be good to go

Merlin

 

[Krazy K]

RAID is the only thing that I can think of that you need pre-install drivers, however with Vista, you can load them on a USB drive and go that route. But I still keep a 3.5 around for when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.

 

[Rob Williams]

I don't think I've touched a floppy drive for a specific reason in the past six or seven years... there's just no need for them anymore. Unless you are dealing with older hardware, I really don't think there is a need for it. Even some RAID drivers are now avaliable on a CD-Rom, which replaces the floppy.

I think it's kind of foolish that the ONLY reason people hold onto floppies is for RAID. These companies need to start releasing CD-Roms with the drivers on it.

 

[Kougar]

MSI introduced some kind of new, mouse-enabled BIOS on their newest motherboards... it can only be flashed via floppy from what I read. Flashing GPU BIOS's does require a floppy as well, unfortunately. If you use XP and use RAID then floppies are also needed. If CD-ROMs work for loading RAID drivers into XP during install then that's something I didn't know.

It'd be great when floppies finally go the way of the serial mouse. Maybe the upcoming USB 3 standard will finally help with this, or one can hope anyway.