How to Install a Floppy Disk Drive

Step 2 – Remove the Front Panel Cover

Now look at the front panel of your case (see Figure 7). There you will see that there are big empty places for installing optical drives like DVD burners, called 5.25” bays, and small empty places for installing floppy disk drives, called 3.5” bays. Locate the 3.5” bay that you want to install your floppy disk drive and remove the plastic cover that exists there.

Figure 7: Case frontal panel.

How this is done depends on the case. The case we used (Antec Sonata III 500) had two levers that when pressed and then pulled released the cage for installing the floppy disk drive (Figure 8). But this isn’t the most common option. On the majority of cases you will need to either remove the plastic cover by pushing it from behind with your hand (just insert your left hand inside the case and push the front cover) or, if your case has a metallic cover behind the plastic cover, using a flat-tip screwdriver to pull the cover out. Also, if you case has this metallic cover behind the plastic cover, you will need to literally break it. This is done by holding it with a flat-tip screwdriver or with a pliers and swinging it up and down until it is broke. Both the plastic cover and the metallic cover can be thrown away.

Figure 8: Cage for installing the floppy disk drive on our case.

Figure 9: Frontal panel without the cover.

The order of the next three steps will depend on the kind of case you have. We are going to post in the same order that in necessary for the case we had (Antec Sonata
III 500). If your case does not feature a removable cage (Figure 8), which is probably your case, please skip to step 4.