The Floppy Drive is Dead…But Causes Problem’s From the Grave
On January 30th of 2007, PC world declared the floppy disk dead. Before that though, most new computers came without a floppy drive anyways. I myself have recently gotten rid of my floppy disk drive, but then found myself needing its sweet plastic-y goodness again.
What could I possibly need the floppy disk drive for? Well that fact of the matter is, for almost a decade the floppy disk has aided computer builders, companies and hobbyist alike, in setting up the Operating System like Windows on a brand new, blank hard drive.
Now of course the floppy disk drive stopped being a requirement long ago for installing a Operating System on a new hard drive, but since I used it for so long, it was really the only way I knew how to do it.
So then what are the alternatives? Well the only 2 other ways I could think of doing it was one, creating a boot disk like I used on the floppy disk, on a plain CD disk. Since the CD/DVD drive is basically here to stay, it is a pretty safe assumption that every computer will have one, so it is a perfect replacement for the floppy disk drive.
The next option I had, which also worked out fine, was to use a flash memory card as my disk storage. In case you don’t know, a flash storage card is that same type of memory that is in your digital camera, and is very small. It usually hooks up through a device connected to a USB port, or built directly into your computer.
Well anyways, since it stores data I simply made it a boot able flash disk with all the same tools that were on my floppy disk, which allowed me to install the operating system. To make it boot from the flash drive, I just opened up the BIOS on startup (hold/press the Delete or F2 key on the first opening splash screen), and change the default boot device to USB or to the built in flash drive. This will make it read the boot able flash disk on the next startup, and boot from it.
These are of course vague descriptions on how to do this, but the fact of the matter is there are to many different types of Operating Systems and boot disk programs to really just give you step by step instructions, because most likely it will not be the same for you.
Also I figure if you are able to install an operating system on a new hard drive anyway, then you are able to get them to work for you anyways.
Whatever your situation is though, my methods will still work if you apply your certain conditions to them.
