Is this only true for older hardware(motherboard, harddrives...) ?

I recently assembled a new computer with a SATA harddrive and I decided to forgo getting a floppy drive since if I really needed one I could have borrowed it from one of the older computers I have at home. After putting everything together, I started up the machine and I noticed that the startup screen already showed the harddrive and that the BIOS detected it too. This is before I inserted any disks or did anything to the machine. I installed Win XP pro and skipped the part where they ask to load 3rd party drivers, but the installation program had no problems detecting it either. The only issue I noticed was that it only detected about 140gb of the 160gb drive. But I managed to fix it later using Partition Magic.

Well, that's my own experience installing a SATA drive without a floppy drive. If anyone else is having problems, one method I heard of solving the driver issue is to use a Win XP installation disk with SP2 on it(which mine did not have). Either you find a disk that comes with it or you slipstream SP2 onto the installation disk.