What is a floppy disk?

Filed Under (Misc.) by Kirby Witmer on 11-10-2007

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I’m so frustrated right now with this old, old problem of installing Windows XP on a RAID hard drive system. The only way to add the drivers is by using a floppy disk. That brings up several questions.

  1. What is a floppy disk?
  2. Where do I find one?
  3. Where do I find a floppy drive? New computers don’t have them.

Ahh.. Here we go, I found a used floppy drive in one of my old computers, but now for a disk. Ahh.. found that too. First disk doesn’t work, second one doesn’t either. Is it the drive or the floppies? Try the third disk.. sweet, that one works. Start Win XP setup, hit F6, insert floppy disk. ERROR!!  grrrrr…. still no go. Ok, lets try with a new disk. Attempting to write files. Error :

Windows Error N. 5
Access is denied.

I agree with Iain Magee :

So - all told - a 5 minute job took probably the most of an hour. Why Microsoft? Why can’t we have setup read the file from a CD or USB key? This was a problem 5 years ago - and I just can’t believe that 5 years on it’s still a problem.

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Comments:

8 Responses to “What is a floppy disk?”

  1. Hans Mast on 17 Oct 2007 at 5:20 am #

    Just slipstream the drivers into the Windows install.

  2. Kirby Witmer on 17 Oct 2007 at 7:05 am #

    Wow. Thanks, hans. That program looks like it makes slipstreaming easy. I’ve checked into slipstreaming before, but it always seemed like more work than its worth.
  3. Hans Mast on 17 Oct 2007 at 7:14 am #

    It is. It’s way easy.

  4. Mike on 17 Oct 2007 at 9:05 am #

    There’s another option I learned about the other day - DriverMax. Lifehacker has a piece about it at http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-windows-download/export-hardware-drivers-with-drivermax-310841.php

  5. Hans Mast on 17 Oct 2007 at 10:04 am #

    That only works *after* you have Windows installed.

  6. Kirby Witmer on 17 Oct 2007 at 12:53 pm #

    btw, Hans, I thought you were on a *mission* trip of some kind?
  7. Hans Mast on 17 Oct 2007 at 2:35 pm #

    I am. What about it?

  8. Kirby Witmer on 22 Oct 2007 at 12:38 pm #

    I was just a tad surprised how much internet access and time you have to use the internet on the mission field. :)

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