USB Floppy Drive Compatibility

Hey all! New to the site - first post - MY name is Kyle and it is a pleasure to be a new member. nice to (soon) meet you guys.

My issue:
I have searched the web relentlessly and can not find the answer to this question. I was given a Toshiba Satellite A205-S5804/PSAF3U-0NR00V.

It is running Vista and I absolutely can not stand this OS. I want to install XP but it won't let me because my XP disc does not have the SATA drivers needed to locate/identify the HDD. At the beginning of the XP install I have to hit F6 to install a 3RD party RAID/SCSI driver. I have the driver but it will only let me install it from a USB floppy drive - no flash drive, no USB CD-R Drive - floppy only. There are many Toshiba floppy drives out there but I have been unable to find out which model is compatible with my machine. Dose anyone have this information. I would be eternally grateful to anyone who would be able to help me out.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and help if you are able.

 

Look an nLite and try to slipstream those drivers into your XP install DVD, then you will only need to start the install and it will automatically find the proper drivers for your system.

See:
nLite - Deployment Tool for the bootable Unattended Windows installation - About


Still, I highly recommend Win7 over XP though.

Either way, Good luck!

 

Yeah, unless you have a really old laptop, i would get 7. XP is like a bucket full of holes as far as security is concerned and support will get dropped by microsoft soon enough as well.

 

Hey guys - thanks for the quick responses. Very much appreciated for taking the time. :thumbsup: I do not want to upgrade to Win 7 yet - maybe someday but I have an XP install disc and it currently suits my needs just fine. As far as nlite goes, I have tried to slipstream the drivers into my WINXP Install disc a few times and I can not seem to get it to work.

So, if anyone knows precisely which USB floppy drive is compatible with my machine, I would love to know. Thanks again.

 

I remember I had the same problem and I tricked an old laptop to think a USB flash drive was a USB external floppy. I can't remember the steps exactly, but I put the SATA drivers needed on it and it worked. I think the USB drive has to have less than 512Mb. Mine was 128Mb, it was a mini SD card inserted into a USB adapter that came with it. See if you have one of those available and try this method. You could search more about this. It may or may not work.

 

If you have the option in BIOS, you can also install Windows in ATA mode and switch over the AHCI post-install. It's a little tricky to install the Matrix storage drivers post-install, but there's plenty of guides/instructions out there, and you won't need to mess with a floppy.