Minor Glitches and Floppy, RIP?
My desktop appears to dislike connecting the external drive through a front USB port; I got a BSOD. I suspect that it might be a port power issue or resource conflict. Another ongoing issue is that the boot cycle stalls at the "searching for USB mass storage devices" stage unless the all-in-one unit (a Canon MP830) is turned off during the boot. On that one, I suspect a conflict between the memory card readers built into the MP830 and the ones integrated into my floppy drive.
If either or both of these are correct, disconnecting the card reader unit in the floppy drive might resolve the issues (the reader slots in the all-in-one are much easier to reach in any case). This leads to the question of whether it's worth bothering to buy and install a plain floppy drive; I can't recall the last time I used a floppy (including the one time my system had to be steam-cleaned and everything reinstalled from scratch and restored from backup for reasons unrelated to the above).
That raises my curiosity: How long has it been since anybody else actually used a floppy disk?
(I ended up disconnecting the MP830 and connecting its USB cable to the external drive to perform the backup, with no problems except the inconvenience. I may need to pick up a USB hub, if I can find room on my desk.)
If either or both of these are correct, disconnecting the card reader unit in the floppy drive might resolve the issues (the reader slots in the all-in-one are much easier to reach in any case). This leads to the question of whether it's worth bothering to buy and install a plain floppy drive; I can't recall the last time I used a floppy (including the one time my system had to be steam-cleaned and everything reinstalled from scratch and restored from backup for reasons unrelated to the above).
That raises my curiosity: How long has it been since anybody else actually used a floppy disk?
(I ended up disconnecting the MP830 and connecting its USB cable to the external drive to perform the backup, with no problems except the inconvenience. I may need to pick up a USB hub, if I can find room on my desk.)