Re: Cannot read any disk in floppy drive

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On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 13:00:30 -0800, Donald L McDaniel
<orthocross@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 11:28:20 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
<kblake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:15:13 -0800, Donald L McDaniel
<orthocross@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Here's my solution:
Pull the darned floppy out of the machine, and throw all your floppies away. If
they're older than a year or so, the magnetic charge on the surface of the media
is pretty much completely discharged by now.


I don't agree. True, floppies are not the most reliable of media. But
that's not to say that all, or even most, floppies are unreadable
after a year or so. I have often successfully read much older
floppies.


I haven't owned a computer which had a floppy drive for at least 4 years now.
They are ANCIENT, and manufacturers were right to discontinue adding one to
their newer off-the-shelf machines.


And I, on the other hand, have floppy drives in all my machines
(except my laptop) and would choose to have one installed if I bought
a new computer tomorrow.

True, one needs them very seldom these days. But considering that they
can be bought for around $10 US or so, I want one just in case. There
are situations in which they come in very handy, such as loading SATA
drivers.



That may be true for you.
But in my case:
1) My Intel motherboard will not allow the use of on-board floppies (so says the
builder at Pacific Solutions, Inc. in Portland, OR.) Unless, of course, she was
lying to me.


I don't know whether that's true or not, but I do know that *most*
motherboards support floppies without a problem. To verify what she
said, just look at the motherboard (or its documentation) to see if
there's a connector for a floppy cable.


2) NO need to install SATA driver in my machine. Vista has one for my on-board
controller OOB.



OK, but SATA drivers were just an example. Needs for floppies
sometimes come up. Those needs are certainly rare, but for many people
they are not non-existent. Some people may occasionally want to boot
to an MS-DOS diskette, for example.

Although I can't remember the last time I used my floppy drive, I am
much more comfortable having it there just on case. It cost me next to
nothing, and, as I said, I'll have one in my next computer too.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
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