My laptop came without a floppy drive, but that didn't bother me too much because I already had a 64Mb USB memory stick. However, snag at work was that the system was NT, which does not support USB. So I bought an inexpensive external USB floppy drive, which is a small box about 6"X4"x5/8". Plugs into a USB port and picked up automatically by plug and play.
I also had cause recently to transfer a large amount of data from one machine to another. I bought a USB powered external hard drive about the same size as the above. About £120 for 80Gb of spare drive [Western Digital], useable everywhere under plug and play. To me, good value. [40Gb drive about £80, and you may be able to get bigger than 80Gb].
In fact, this option may be better than a fixed internal hard disk - you can stick it in you pocket; it doesn't weigh much, either.