External (USB) floppy drive question

[AlexV]

As you know, much of the newer PCs comes without floppy drive (bye bye old A: friend). I know 1.44 MB floppies is really dead now with USB "key" drives and all those portable devices (like MP3 players) but I find floppy drives to be (sometimes) usefull in some occasions (like installing a newer BIOS).

Now on with my question:
Since my PC case (enclosure) don't have a 3.5" bay (and no 5.25" bay free) I can't have an internal floppy drive. I would like to buy an external USB floppy drive. Does these drives are detected without an OS? Can I boot on a floppy from these external drives to install a new BIOS on a machine?

Thanks!

[oracleguy]

If the BIOS supports usb floppies drives then yes. However most modern BIOSes should let you boot from a usb flash drive, you can use those to flash a BIOS. Or a bootable CD too.