Floppy disk drive works with Win 10 Pro, won't book if disk in drive

The other day, we found some old floppy disks way back in one of our closets. I still have the drive-bay floppy disk drive I kept from a really old Dell laptop, long since gone. This drive could also work with USB. Lucky for me, because my new ASUS ROG X570 motherboard does not have a floppy drive cable header. (And no more IDE cable headers either.)

So most but not all of the 30+ floppy disk were still readable. Imagine that. But, File Explorer didn't pick up the file dates. However, Beyond Compare did, so I was able to keep the newest files. Some of these files were actually interesting, like 25 or more years later.

Really weird, when I had to reboot my system, but forgot to remove the disk from the floppy drive. The system refused to boot up until after I removed the disk.

When I was a tech in the field many years ago a customers would call in saying that their computer wouldn't boot. And a lot of the time that was the problem. I believe the error was "Disk Boot Failure - Insert System Disk And Press Enter" Very common back in the day.

Hello @x509,

x509 said:

Really weird, when I had to reboot my system, but forgot to remove the disk from the floppy drive. The system refused to boot up until after I removed the disk.

That is normal if the floppy drive [ USB port ] is higher than the OS drive in the Boot options!

I hope this helps!

Do you remember loading Windows from floppies? OMG.... I do not miss those days...

Hello @Lance1,

Lance1 said:

Do you remember loading Windows from floppies? OMG.... I do not miss those days...

I have still got some for prosperity sake!

Can you imagine installing let's say Window 7 64 bit using 1.44 MB floppies! How many would it take to do the job?

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My apologies. I kind of went off-topic.

Great picture @Lance1.

I just put this slideshow together. It's a continuation of that image. What do you think? The sound track should bring up some ghosts. If someone feels that I'm hijacking this post please say so...

Paul Black said:

Hello @Lance1,



I have still got some for prosperity sake!

Me, too, MS-DOS 6.xx and Windows 3.11, never know when they'll come in handy. I still have a computer with an internal floppy drive, an internal 250MB ZIP drive plus a couple of USB floppy drives and a USB 250MB ZIP drive. If absolutely necessary could install a combination 3.5"/5.25" drive. The biggest problem is having a motherboard port and a BIOS that supports the drives.

Berton said:

Me, too, MS-DOS 6.xx and Windows 3.11, never know when they'll come in handy. I still have a computer with an internal floppy drive, an internal 250MB ZIP drive plus a couple of USB floppy drives and a USB 250MB ZIP drive. If absolutely necessary could install a combination 3.5"/5.25" drive. The biggest problem is having a motherboard port and a BIOS that supports the drives.

I think i may have an old motherboard that would work in that configuration. it's in a box somewhere in this mess of mine.