Adding a floppy drive to a new XP PC

[te51cle]

A friend of the family bought a PC recently (P4 with XP2) but it didn't have a floppy drive in it. I'm the nearest thing to a PC expert that he knows but he didn't consult me before getting the PC (aargh !). He needs the floppy for transferring stuff to work so I found a floppy drive for him, cabled it up to the motherboard and let the BIOS know there was now a floppy drive there. Booted up the PC and it saw there was new hardware so it loaded appropriate drivers and declared the new hardware ready for use. So far so good.

Opened up My Computer and the A: drive is visible, but there is a problem - the computer refuses to recognise that there is a floppy disk in the drive. It's not a case of formatting the floppy disks as the PC does not attempt to read the drive at all as far as I can tell, no clicking or whirring noises from head movement or drive rotation. The only symptom I've got is that the drive operational light is permanently lit, but there is no action from the drive itself.

What have I done wrong or fogotten to do ?

[robbieduncan]

This is going to sound really silly but is the ribbon cable in the drive the correct way round? The cables can be put in both ways round and the drive will still show up in Windows but it won't work!

[Plotloss]

Tell him to buy a USB pen drive.

Its going to be a hell of a lot easier than arsing about with floppy disks.

[aldi]

Yep also the small 'twist' in the cable needs to go at the floppy end not the motherboard end.

[FunkyNige]

If all else fails, external USB floppy drives are £20 from PC World.

[te51cle]

Thanks guys. Pretty sure that the cable ios in the wrong way round as I got a similar response on another site. I have the twist at the floppy end but it could well be upside down - why on earth no-one made the connectors idiot-resistant at both ends (there's no such thing as idiot-proof !) I don't know. I'll give it a go when I'm next over there and let you know the results.

Due to the nature of his work machine USB anything is not an option !

[GreenV8S]

The floppy disk is dead, long live the USB memory stick.

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

GreenV8S said:

The floppy disk is dead, long live the USB memory stick.

Unless you've got to add drivers to Windows Server etc on boot, like RAID drivers. As far as I know they must be on floppy....

[annodomini2]

The drive letter on a floppy is signified by which position on the cable the floppy drive is mounted, i.e. before or after the twist.

If the light is permanently on the floppy drive you have the connector on upside down and you need to rotate the connector by 180degrees.

If you have assigned drive a:, but it is not reading, then you have it on the wrong connector. You can either swap the connector or as a trial enable drive B to see if the drive is communicating.

If swapping the connector doesn't work then the floppy drive is more than likely knackered (would try another cable though before returning it.)

Although upgrading to a USB memory stick/pen does make things easier (more space and faster).

[Jinx]

My dad did the same thing. I picked up an external floppy drive (around £10) for him - plugs straight into a USB connection and works perfectly, no messing about or anything. A lot easier than mounting one internally (even if you have the right cables).