Can I make a USB stick behave like a floppy drive?

[Ratz]

Sorry for this being such a techie post but I know there are a few of you in the same profession as me.

I am having trouble with a Dell which requires me to run a Windows repair from CD, the trouble is that because it has SATA drives I need to install the drivers as part of the repair. External floppy is not an option and so I was hoping to make a USB stick masquerade as one. I know this can be done, I just don't know how. Any ideas?

Cheers.

 

[Rose Chap]

Depending on the BIOS version you may be able to boot from this device. From memory I think if you press F11 or F12 during the startup, you can select USB from the boot list.

 

[gbjeppm]

You need to be able to get the USB drive recognised by the BIOS to boot straight from it, I would think that this is unlikley, but worth a check in the boot routine.

So your other option is to create a windows boot disk (if you have a floppy drive) that allows you to load the drivers for the USB drive. Or any other medium that you can boot from.

Here is an article from Microsoft which might be of interest although it wont solve your problem

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/usb-boot.mspx

 

[Ratz]

Depending on the BIOS version you may be able to boot from this device. From memory I think if you press F11 or F12 during the startup, you can select USB from the boot list.

It's F12. I'm unsure how this helps me with a Windows repair though, during the repair process I hit F6 to load SATA drivers but at this point Windows will only look for a floppy drive. Are you suggesting I could create some sort of pre-execution environment to load drivers etc. on the USB stick before Windows kicks in?

Thanks.

 

[grober]

see here
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php
and here
http://www.nu2.nu/mkbt/

you need the CD drivers on the USB stick also. These could be Sata or EIDE depending on your CD/DVD DRIVES?

You need to set the Bios (which contains the basic operating parametersfor the computer and tells it what hardware to expect) to use the USB stick as its default boot device rather than the hard disc/floppy. There is normally a preferred order in which the bios searches installed hardware for a "boot sector" = software to start running programs in the cpu /memory. You have to force/fool it to use the USB stick

 

[gbjeppm]

In the Bios there is normally a choice to choose the boot sequence of Floopy, CD Rom and Hard Disk (there may if you are lucky be a choice of using USB drive, then you are sorted)

If no USB choice you need to us another method to boot and load the USB drivers, there is plenty of info on the web on how to do this.

Alternatively if you have it on a network you can load the network drivers.

 

[Ratz]

Thanks for your help everyone, I'll go away and see how I get on.

The only other alternative was to install Vista .

 

[Sp!ke]

In the bios, set the drive to compatibility mode.

This way the XP cd will see the drive ok. Once you've installed windows, then install the SATA drivers and then turn off compatibility mode in the bios.

Much easier.

 

[mercmanuk]

i had the same problem,xp disc must be service pack 2 and you'll need a floppy drive,hit f6

 

[HughJarse]

OORRRrrrrrrr you can slipstream an xp disk and put the drivers on the cd.

 

[fuzzer]

OORRRrrrrrrr you can slipstream an xp disk and put the drivers on the cd.

much easier to set the compatibility mode ..

 

[HughJarse]

much easier to set the compatibility mode ..

Absolutely, thats why it was an "orrrrrrrrr"

 

[masqueraid]

FWIW this is how I do it
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-6346_11-5928902.html

 

[AJTHOMAS]

USB floppy disk drives are pretty cheap these days...

Spoils the fun, but quick-n-easy

 

[fuzzer]

USB floppy disk drives are pretty cheap these days...

Spoils the fun, but quick-n-easy

but , on that topic some of the cheap ones don't boot.

It has to be one that does some form of IDE emulation for it to boot in my findings.

One of the better USB floppy drives ive used that doesnt cost a mint was the IOMEGA one. Wee silver number. Pretty good