Silent FDD (Floppy Disk Drive)

JEN · **Joined:** Mon Apr 21, 2003 12:45 pm **Posts:** 212

Sorry if this has already been discussed, but I was unable to find anything on it.

My floppy disk drive is unbelievably noisy. OK, I hardly ever use it, but each time the computer gets into windows, the floppy disk drive is checked, and "WHAT A NOISE!!!". The same happens when I log off.

So, are there any silent FDDs around?

JEN · **Joined:** Mon Apr 21, 2003 12:45 pm **Posts:** 212

digitalix wrote:

I'm surprised it even does that, mine never checks the floppy drive when it boots up, do you have it set in your BIOS to check the floppy?

No???

It checks the FDD once Windows 2k is loaded, and as soon as I click shutdown within Windows 2k ???

GamingGod · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2003 10:58 am

Yea my moms dell checks the floppy drive when booting and shutting down I believe, and I think ive only used it once when we first got the computer to transfer some files.

JEN · **Joined:** Mon Apr 21, 2003 12:45 pm **Posts:** 212

My computers not exactly old either! its a KT333. However, the FDD is from an older computer (LX440 P2 233)

I wonder if its OS specific. I have Windows 2000, what do you guys have?

Mr_Smartepants · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2003 11:45 am

I had a Samsung FDD that made a God-awful racket when used (or checked). I swapped it for a Panasonic FDD and silent BLISS!
Both were new BTW. For the record, Samsung FDD SUCK right out of the box!

JimK · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2003 12:39 pm

How are Mitsumi FDDs? I picked up a black one at a recent show to put in my new case. Hope it won't be too bad. :roll:

Riffer · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2003 3:38 pm

Goatie wrote:

I think that it might be anti-virus software? It used to do it with my old PC till I changed virus software. Might be lying though... :wink:

Yes

Norton Anti-Virus does that.

I don't know if there was an option to stop it, since it's been a while since I had a floppy.

aphonos · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2003 9:07 pm

Goatie wrote:

I think that it might be anti-virus software? It used to do it with my old PC till I changed virus software. Might be lying though... :wink:

Agreed, it is likely the anti-virus software. If you were running a different Microsoft OS, it may be the "search for new floppy drives at start" option, but Win2K does not have that option to turn off as does, for example, WinME.

More recent versions of Norton (can't speak for other AV software) offer the option of disabling the floppy seek, though the program will recommend against it. While it is technically safer to leave the option enabled, in the quest for silence, if you don't tend to leave floppies in the drive, turn it off.

I would also check the BIOS to see if it is checking the FDD at startup. You may have different causes for the seek noise at startup and at shutdown.

Justin_R · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2003 9:36 pm

Mr_Smartepants wrote:

I had a Samsung FDD that made a God-awful racket when used (or checked).

That's interesting. Someone in the "Quiet Floppy Drive" thread praised Samsung drives, and the customer reviews at newegg (which, granted, are not the most reliable source of information) specifically mention how quiet they are. I suppose there must be different models of each manufacturers floppy drives.

On one of my Win2K PCs, I had floppy seek disabled in the BIOS, and the floppy drive just sat there silent until I put a disk in it. At few months later, Win2K decided that it should check the floppy during startup. I believe the culprit may have been that A:/ was added to one of the system path variables. The HD crashed on that machine (well, actually, I killed it by hooking it up to a 5V fan adapter), and I haven't had that problem on my fresh install on the new HD.

JEN · **Joined:** Mon Apr 21, 2003 12:45 pm **Posts:** 212

Yes, you were right. It was the virus software, there is an option which allows you to disable "check FDD at logoff" and it no longer checks it when logging in or out

Thanks

Mr_Smartepants · **Posted:** Sun May 04, 2003 11:31 am

Since everyone has had different experiences, I guess the safest assumption is that there is no one quiet floppy! Unless you count the one still in the shrinkwrap! :lol:

JimK · **Posted:** Sun May 04, 2003 11:50 am

Looking at it that way, my black Mitsumi is Still Quiet

Jim

aphonos · **Posted:** Mon May 05, 2003 5:14 pm

digitalix wrote:

*chucks floppy drive* There!

_________________
.....
"No optical drives, I never seem to use them!"

No floppy drives. No optical drives. If this pattern continues, you'll have to pitch the hard drive, too, pretty soon. :lol:

FWIW, I saw this the other day at

[url=hardocp.com]Hardocp.com[/url] wrote:

[H]ardNews 8th Edition Thursday May 01, 2003
Posted by Kyle 2:17 PM (CDT)

USB Booting:
Our friends over at Kingston were kind enough to give us 10, 128MB Kingston Data Travelers to give out as prizes at our Winter [H]ardware Workshop. Of course, being the greedy bastard that I am, I kept one for myself to use on the test bench. If you find yourself needing to move around tidbits of data and do not have the luxury of always having a network handy, these little USB solid-state data storage devices are a real value.

Many of the new Intel brand mainboards (and a few other retail brands) have a bootable USB option. This should be commonplace on all mainboards before long. Anyway, I got to wondering what all was needed to boot from one of these Data Traveler devices or if it was even possible. So I copied a Windows 98 boot disk over onto the stick, set the board to boot from USB, and placed it in the USB port as shown.

Low and behold, my machine booted right up. I tried copying over bootable programs such as Ghost and some BIOS flashing programs and all worked without a hitch.

Now I am sure that many of you are already aware of this, but it was one of those things that snuck up on me and surprised me with its simplicity. Maybe we really are that much closer to chunkin' those floppy drives?

(NOTE: I post the whole quote since [H]ard news links seem to move.)
Also, it was announced in Feb in a CNet article that Dell was going to stop offering the floppy drive as standard equipment in one of its Dimension lines.

I also saw somewhere recently that Intel may be pushing the FDD out of its standards, but for the life of me, I can't locate the source :roll:

, so maybe I was just dreaming. If anyone else saw this and can locate the link, could you please post it? THX.

aphonos · **Posted:** Tue May 06, 2003 10:31 am

Radeonman wrote:

I thought I had escaped my floppy drive days (mine died 3 years ago and I hadn't bothered to replace it) until recently when I needed a boot disk for the 'cuda V's AAM. I also flashed the bios on my motherboard, graphics card, and network card since I had a disk with which to do so...

Can't the same outcome be accomplished via a CDR and booting from the CD drive?

Silent FDD (Floppy Disk Drive)

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