I formatted my new laptop to NTFS a while back, and now it won’t read floppy disks. Ever time I ask it to read a floppy, it tells me that the disk isn’t formatted (it is) and asks me if I want it formatted. If I then try and format said disk, I get an error message saying that the disk could not be formatted (no reason given). It also seems to think that the floppy is RAW format where my other (floppy friendly) laptop thinks it’s FAT.
What on earth is going on here?
Your disk drive is bad. It has nothing to do with NTFS. Buy a new disk drive.
It was just a coincidence, was it? :smack: Well, it was a dirt cheap drive.
Thanks.
Floppy drive are dirt cheap. Just remember to get one without the dirt.
It very well could be this problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;140060
It says there might be problems with the “media descriptor byte in the BIOS parameter block (BPB) of the boot sector”, and that some older disks may not have this.
I have had numerous floppy problems with different machines running XP (too many for hardware failure to explain.) I am not exactly sure if the real problem is what the above link says or not.
Personally, I think floppy support in XP just plain sucks. I have no data to back that up, but since I started using XP on different machines my floppy problems have increased ten fold.
The floppy disk is no longer considered a practical storage medium. It hasn’t increased in size in nearly twenty years! The only reason its still included on some PCs is that it makes a good emergency diagnostic boot device.
It’s not that. I formatted the test floppy on my other laptop (Windows 98) and I still had the same problem. I’ll have a go at trying to link the two laptops together, but I don’t think they’re at all compatible when it comes to networking. I’ll have a poke around the internet just to make sure though.
It’s not absolutely necessary for me to have a floppy drive, but it means I can walk fifteen minutes to my nearest university campus rather than travelling the three-and-a-half miles to the main campus, where I can plug my XP laptop into their network.
Plus, you can open one of the unused Windows 3.1 packs from the store room, wipe the disks and put them to use. At least, that’s what I do at work when I need to quickly transfer something and I don’t have my MP3 player with me…
I’ve got to take issue with that broad statement. True, floppies have not changed with the times are on their way to obsolescence. But no other media has arisen that can reliably provide all the functions of a floppy. Floppy technology is universally recognized, stable, proven, bootable, and rewritable. CD/DVD? Generally not writable. USB? Not yet… there are too many machines out there using old OS’s and old BIOS’s to consider USB to be reliable.
For me, having worked in tech support, reliable bootability onto a writable medium is something I’m not willing to part with. I think the industry has made a mistake in getting rid of floppies before creating another medium that can reliably fill their niche.