virtualbox.org

Hi
I have some Operating Systems on Floppy and rather than the slow process of imaging every byte of every disk(they are over 30 disks in my copy of OS/2), I would like to use my USB floppy disk directly with a guest VM.(so the guest sees it as an internal floppy) Is this possible?
-Jamie Marchant

I don't believe so. Virtualbox's BIOS doesn't support booting from USB. (Virtualbox's EFI does, but OS/2 probably doesn't work on EFI.)

I haven't imaged a floppy so I don't know how slow it is. But I'd guess the install process has to read the same data, so imaging should take about the same time. And those floppies aren't going to be viable forever...

I don't think I need every sector of every floppy unless I do a full install, this also assumes each image works, if it does not I have to do it again. I then have to image any disk(of other software) I want to use , maybe I'll just stick to real hardware for the time being.

I don't think this will work, but for a different reason. A floppy drive in a USB caddy is USB mass storage, not a real floppy. But if you already have this drive then it costs nothing to try it.

VirtualBox these days does not add virtual floppy disk controllers to the VM recipe by default, you'd have to add it your self in the setting "Storage" panel.

Incidentally, first thing on my list of things to do would be to extract every file from every floppy and stick the files on a CD or a NAS, or both. I'm not sure I would trust a USB drive for data important enough to keep for decades. I'm also not sure about cloud storage: I keep wondering, what if the company decides the server is not profitable and shuts it down when I'm not looking. Like they say: if you want something done "right", do it yourself.

I would recommend to take the investment and make images. Advantages:
- backup of your floppies
- no future need for physical floppy drive
- faster loading of OS'es.