Is a floppy drive necessary?

Manaris

I'm just about to build a new pc. Was just wondering, is it necessary to have a floppy drive installed for the machine to boot, or can I leave it out altogether? I have a floppy drive on my current pc that hasn't seen a disk since the pc came out of it's box, so really don't see the point of them! I don't want to buy a floppy drive unless I have to, but something is nagging at the back of my mind that a floppy drive is a required component of a pc. Am I completely wrong about this, or do I need to buy the dreaded floppy drive?

Cheers,
Andrew.

Dr. Dre

I was in the same situation recently, and I just went ahead and bought one anyway, for the sake of a tenner you may as well. Although I do agree they are of little use these days, I only use mine to do BIOS updates for my mobo and graphics card.

seamus

Dell have plans in the pipeline to do away with all floppy drives on new computers, so you won't be alone Check out www.enn.ie last week I think.

If you don't need a floppy, don't fit one. Easy as that. Personally, I couldn't live without one cos the only computers in college with zip drives, I'd have to share with the peons in the student labs ugh So usually I hulk 5 or ten floppies around with me for carrying stuff home

Winters

I still find that you get a good bit of drivers on floppy. Both my monitor, network card and some others came on floppy so if i never had a floppy drive i would have to search through the hugh endless net to find the software, or just goto the manufactoers sites. Nevertheless, for how cheap they are just add one, you may need it.

KdjaCL

Are you mad???

The Floppy is the most important part of a PC in times of bad shít happening you can always rely on the floppy to work.

I know cds are now bootable but floppy drive will always be the last resort on any PC.

They nearly free dont take up a normal power line and have their own cable , so it just sits there not boterhing anyone

kdjac

elexes

i was given a floppy buy a guy in a office last week to look at a auto cad drawing and say what i thought of it . it took me ages to find where i had one left in a old system so i could put it into mine

i dont use them i use them in work a lil but i can live without them . i dont plan having them in any of my computers

BigEejit

For small files they are handy, and for mobo bioses and other firmware updates they are great ... otherwise you will end up like me, making a bootable CD to update the firmware on my scsi card, graphics card and mobo...
Which took bloody ages I might add (although it has to be said that I tried to be clever and put all the different updates onto one bootable CD)...

KdjaCL

Forgot about Bios upgrades.

Handy for them.

kdjac

quozl

i've no floppy drive. never missed it.

woolymammoth

floppy disks dont have a future for very long. the only reason we use them is because, well, we're forced to use them. most of the computers in business and colleges (especially colleges) have old computers with crappy floppy drives and no CDRW drives. as long as we still live in the removeable media dark ages we'll just have to make do with this small, delicate, and unreliable piece of crap disk.
the floppy is dead... long live the pocket CD-RW

ManWithThePlan

I only use floppys to transfer programming files form college to home.
Other than that i use my cd-rw.

I agree that floppy drive's days are numbered.

DiscoStu

the USB memory key is the future. udf packtet writing is even more unreliable than the old floppy imho.

Gerry

The only acceptable use for a floppy drive is for transferring files from a computer which does not have a cdrw drive or internet connection to a computer which does not have an internet connection. They are awful slow, unreliable, inconvenient, pieces of crud. I don't have one in my machine. I have to do a bios update soon, but I don't mind taking the time to make a bootable cd, I can use a cdrw and put different stuff on it in future.

strat

i dont have one in mine, no space due to all the hard dirves i guess, on the rare occocsian i do need it i just plug in one temporarily

Cake Fiend

The handiness-to-price ratio means a floppy drive is a no-brainer addition imo.

marauder

never use one - asus have a windows based update so dont even need one for flashing bios. But like everyone says, at that price, why not