I just ordered my Floppy Emu a few days ago--can't wait to play with it!  That's definitely the best option, but costs quite a bit more than free...  

Forgot to mention, you do have to run HFVE as admin (even if you're logged in as an admin--you still have to right click and select run as admin...).  It runs fine for me on a retina MBP running Windows 8.1 via bootcamp.  I use a Dell USB floppy drive (it's actually designed to plug into a laptop drive bay, but can optionally be plugged in externally as USB).