Do I need a floppy in my new XP PC?

[andy1961]

Hello!

Non-techy person with what may be a daft question, but... I've just ordered a Ricochet with XP Home. Reading round the forums I saw a reference to needing a floppy to install XP, but it's possible that it only applied to PCs with HDs in RAID configuration (told you I was non-techy...) I'm wondering whether I need to ring fast to ask them to include a floppy, in case I ever need to reinstall...?

Many thanks for any help.

Update: doh... just realised I can get a USB floppy if necessary. Think I'll stick with that unless peeps tell me it's a bad idea.

[JDowdall]

Yeah you can get usb floppy's, but when installing xp afaik it wont recognise them, but you only need the floppy drive for installing raid drivers, which isnt really worth it and shouldn't concern you, and @ the end oif the day for installing xp once its not really that hard to temporarily install a floppy drive :)

[rctneil]

If you want a floppy drive but don;t wnat it to be seen then install it inside the machine in an HDD bay so it's there for when needed if ever!

[JDowdall]

If you want a floppy drive but don;t wnat it to be seen then install it inside the machine in an HDD bay so it's there for when needed if ever!

How are you gonna get to it though?

[rctneil]

As most new cases allow the HDD's to be fitted horizontally scross the case then you fit it there and in the rare instance you need to use it you just remove the side panel for a small bit to use it. I know someone who does the same except he modded his side panel with a slit to allow a floppy to be passed throguh and into the slot!

[JDowdall]

ahhh that's quite a cool idea :) my case doesnt have this so understandably i was confused :P

[rctneil]

neither does mine to be honest!

[PMM]

If you ordered it with XP as a pre-installed option then you have no real short term issue and more likely no issue at all.

If you did not ask for it to be pre-installed then certainly with XP you would a floppy drive to load up sata Driver support and Raid driver support before the installation of XP.

Its an issue only for XP and lower Vista and such like allow drivers off a USB drive.

** I do not know how Novatech ship out there computers with XP but they might supply a proprietary XP disk slipstreamed with all the necessary drivers which is common practice with some system builders.

[andy1961]

Many thanks to all of you for the help :) I'm getting XP pre-installed, and I haven't got a RAID, so it sounds as though I'm okay as things stand.

Thanks again! All help is much appreciated.