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Question
Thursday, January 12, 2017 10:29 PM
When provisioning Azure VMs running Windows, there is sometimes a floppy disk drive attached to drive letter A:, and/or a CD/DVD drive attached to drive letter E:.
What is the technical reason behind this?
All replies (6)
Friday, January 13, 2017 5:09 PM âś…Answered | 1 vote
Hello Charlie,
Thank you for reverting.
It is understandable that floppy disks are rarely used these days and hence one would feel that the existence of such a drive would be unnecessary. However, we have had customers in the past get back to us asking for this feature for example in Floppy support gone in Windows Virtual PC? and it has become quite tedious for the customer to set up the driver once again. This is the reason it is still present. You can always disable it if required from the Device Manager but I would have to conclude that this is by design.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Loydon
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Friday, January 13, 2017 12:45 PM
Hello Charlie,
Thank you for posting on the Azure forums!
Two types of images can be used in Azure: VM image and OS image. A VM image includes an operating system and all disks attached to a virtual machine when the image is created. A VM image is the newer type of image. Before VM images were introduced, an image in Azure could have only a generalized operating system and no additional disks. Although, the virtual floppy disk should be usable by attaching an external floppy disk it does not seem to be an option here. This appears to be by design that the floppy disk appears in the disks section.
More information on https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/azure/en-us/181bde91-6ee6-461d-b0ec-a4de245217c7/why-would-each-azure-vm-have-removable-disk-a-mounted?forum=windowsazuredata.
Let me know if you have any further questions.
Regards,
Loydon
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Friday, January 13, 2017 3:30 PM
Hi Loydon,
I still don't understand. Why would the VM image (a newer type of image) include a floppy drive and/or a CD/DVD drive, which are obviously unusable in an Azure VM?
Friday, January 13, 2017 8:01 PM
So you're saying that the same image that was used for on-premises virtualization (where floppy disk drive might have been useful) was ported over to Azure, and that is why the floppy disk drive and CD/DVD drive shows up.
If so, that makes sense, although confusing for Azure users.
Saturday, January 14, 2017 3:19 PM
Hello Charlie,
That is correct. We do customize the Azure gallery images as per the cloud deployment configurations but the basic idea would remain the same.
Glad this helped you.
Regards,
Loydon
Thursday, December 20, 2018 8:39 PM