Floppy Woes...

[Spinal]

Not that kind... The 3.5" inch kind... no, still not there... the rectangular, 3.5" kind...

Seriously now, I need to put some drivers on a disc so that windows 2000 will recognise my SCSI controller (HP SmartArray 5300); but all my floppies, which I carefully stored away 4/5 years ago (away from heat, cold, humidity, magnetic sources AND light...) seem to pop up the error "Please insert a disc into drive a:" when I try reading them on a computer (with the intention to write the drivers to them). I tried in 2 computers over 30 floppies...

What do you recon? is it the floppies or both the drives? any workarounds or "cleaner" solutions?

Its getting quite frustrating (first the W2k3 installer decided it would just hang on startup, so I had to dig up my old W2K cds... not fun!)

Thanks in advance,
Michele

 

[wallingd]

................Ain't floppy now LOL!

Nite nite.

 

[grober]

Try this---I have no idea if it works or not.
With Windows XP Home SP2 I have used this work-around with success.
Put floppy disc in drive.
Restart computer.
When asked to remove disk, do so, then tap spacebar and wait for Windows to load.
For the remainder of that session all floppy discs will work.

 

[Sp!ke]

My suggestion, Wait till the shops open and buy some floppies tomorrow.

 

[wallingd]

Aha yes this sounds like one of those post-Windows-98 issues. We still get it at work now. We used to have a Windows 98 machine - did a ScanDisk on the floppies then they worked fine. Try a Scandisk on a Windows 98 image.

God knows why.

 

[GrahamC230K]

Blow in the drive. My floppy drives never work as they go months and months, maybe years between use.

I've been using the same old recycled floppy disks for almost a decade.

 

[masqueraid]

Drive problem - unless all your disks were stored in the same place.
Quick test - get a disk you don't need, put it in the drive and format it.
Copy a few files to it, remove it and then put it back and see if you can read it. If you can you are probably looking at deteriorated floppies if you can't go and buy a new drive (less than £10 - or scavanged from another PC!) they are simple to install. The only issue will be matching case colour and (in newer machines) the width of the housing at the front.

Cleaning solutions can help but a general error is solved quicker by replacement (it is all too easy to spend hours on this - just try costing it in lost weekend hours!)

 

[Spinal]

Just tried:
- Blowing (not funny...)
- Inserting the disk then restarting the computer (the pc wont even see the disk when it boots, it just doesn't read it as a "no disk in drive" sort of thing)
- Don't have a windows 98 machine hanging around, if nothing else works, I'll need to install 98 somewhere
- masqueraid: can't do any of that... when I try opening the disk in explorer I just get the "no disk in drive" error. I thought it might be the drive, so I tried 10 or so floppies in a second computer (the only other computer that I can boot with a floppy disk); but they all gave the same error...

I'm off to maplins to buy some more floppies... sigh... there goes my collection of games-on-floppy (where in the world is carmen sandiego anyone? or wing commander?

Michele

 

[Gollom]

If you can you are probably looking at deteriorated floppies if you can't go and buy a new drive (less than £10 - or scavanged from another PC!) they are simple to install. The only issue will be matching case colour and (in newer machines) the width of the housing at the front.
[\quote]

A USB floppy is not much more nowadays and you don't need to muck about installing, matching colour etc.

 

[masqueraid]

A USB floppy is not much more nowadays and you don't need to muck about installing, matching colour etc.

Good point - think that shows I've been doing this too long!

 

[Spinal]

Just came back from maplins... oh, the shame! I had to ask for some floppies, to which I got a funny look and (eventually) a box of floppies. They are exactly the same as the ones I had (brand, model etc) - even the error message I get is the same.

Funny that two computers in two different rooms would come up with the same error messages though! I think I may have a spare drive lying around in the loft or garage, I'll try those (color matching isn't an issue, its a Lian-Li case with a floppy bezel )

Grrrrrumble... how very annoying that I might need to wait even more to set up the server...

Michele

p.s. on a totally unrelated note:
http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/80518/Animated_Vs_Animator_II.html
is fairly funny...

 

[blassberg]

pc world are not selling any more floppies when current stock runs out

 

[fuzzer]

Hmm , i wonder if you can slipstream the drivers into the windows 2000 install?

 

[Spinal]

Finally got it working! I salvaged a floppy drive from an old computer that I had lying in the garage (I throw away very little when it comes to computers ); which combined with my new floppies seems to be working... even though I needed to format the floppies (though they say "formatted" on the box) oh well...

Now to install W2k, so that I can upgrade the firmware, so that I may (finally) install windows 2003... sigh...

Thanks for the help!
Michele

 

[Sp!ke]

As Spinal just found out, sometimes you still need floppy drives...

 

[High-Lo]

As Spinal just found out, sometimes you still need floppy drives...

I still use floppy drives sometimes and I'm an IT professional

Sadly it looks like they are heading the same way as Betamax video tapes..

 

[Spinal]

Beta-what? jk... I'm young, but I've done some HISTORY

In an ideal world, we would have a USB flash drive reader (or flash card reader) that works exacly as a floppy drive, so that you can replace your junky old floppy drive with this and the computer wont know the difference...

But, its not an ideal world, is it? Now I need to start learning how to use W2k3, but it seems fairly intuitive... won't be too hard to get it going before I get a book to read up on the finer points...

<goes off leaving the floppies attached to the server with a large magnet>
Michele

 

[Gollom]

<goes off leaving the floppies attached to the server with a large magnet>

PMSL :bannana:

 

[masqueraid]