Bye-Bye floppys? Should I be sad?

For me, it isn't so much that it's old as it is that those things are completely unreliable.

The fact that you can't hold anything bigger than a word file in it doesn't help, either.

It's only because of the ridiculous obsession with (illegally obtained) multimedia that you don't see any reason for them any more


I find floppies useful enough that I've managed perfectly well without a usb stick/zip drive up to now.

I really think that my advisor would strangle me if I told him I wouldn't work on anything that wouldn't fit on a floppy disk.

It would make digitizing images quicker though.

That is a sad, sad thing, though. If you write three sentences and save it in Word, you use up more space than a floppy can hold? That's not progressive technology, that's bloat.

-J.

I'm still getting goosebumps when I think back to the sound the Amiga (my first computer) made. Krrrrr-k krrrrr-k ... and you could just hear when it was going to give you one of those damned read/write errors

I will second J.Allen's reaction -- I can carry (for example) several .bmps, fonts, and Word files around all on the same disk. Dunno what floppies you've been using.




. . . PLUS I can then carry the disk around in an ordinary pencil box (I guess those "baby" CD's would fit as well). Nice and handy, that. And if the floppy spills out it's not going to roll merrily off down the street

PLUS I can work on stuff on the old computer downstairs and transfer it via floppy to other computers. No CD burner (or USB stick input) down there.

PLUS I can actually, you know, erase stuff that I neither need nor want anymore. And then record stuff over where the old stuff used to be! Just like with a hard drive! And come back a year or more later and the (new) stuff is still there.

PLUS I don't have to worry about the sun burning a hole through the electro-physical manifestation of my Big Semester Project.

>< That, dear NATHMMM, is what zip drives/usb disks are for.

And the Zip Drive is another thing that's going to die out if it hasn't yet.

The SuperDisk should've replaced the floppy--a drive that can run a 100M 3 1/2" diskette OR a traditional floppy. But Zip had a corner on the market and more and more files were being transferred over networks...

I was over-exaggerating to make a point: Namely, that I hate this technology and I'm glad I had an excuse to never buy one EVER again.

Glad to know you can read my mind.

No, I didn't have much in the way of "illegally obtained" multimedia prior to getting high speed Internet last year, simply because I was working on 56K. Much of the shit on those damn floppies were Word files for school, or my own personal writings and it's maddening to havce a file that worked flawlessly on the floppy at home, then take it to school and try to print a damn file and have it never load or have it prompt you to re-format. I didn't even hear about USB flash drives until May of 2004, and even the little itty-bitty ones (about 128 MB) cost about fifty dollars back then, so it was way out of my league.

The issues with floppies for me wasn't so much the lask of space as the tempremental nature of the beast, hence why I flove my USB stick. The superior storage space was just icing on the cake (Which I did make good use of by downloading PAID mp3 files on the computers at my college )

USB drives are much smaller and personally, keep it attached to my keychain.

I suppose, anything that old should be used as a doorstop, IMO.

Same with USB drive, actually, it is more likely to be there. As with floppies, get a little dust under the protective slide or if it ventures too close to a magnet, or any other numerous setbacks... good-bye data.

No, but the sun will bake your floppy disc and make it unreadable.

Floppies are very unreliable media to store data on. Not only the disks, but FDD were also very unreliable as well.

There is no reason not to switch, unless you enjoy working with 486 and older PCs.

ironically, i need a floppy right now for a win98 boot disk...

creating a win98 virtual machine to run some of my old games, and test software for backwards compatability

Mmm...USB Drives. 1 & 2 Gigs of data on a fragile memory chip, all dangling on the end of your keys.

-J.

Heh. A few years back, in a wave of nostalgia, I downloaded "Elite" and a C-64 emulator. After getting past the wave of nostalgia and remembering the DOS commands, I was greeted by the "Elite" opening and theme...and that was as far as I got, because I had no idea how to "Press play on tape."

as for the fragility of the floppy, i've just used one thats had fonts on it since 1994, and still had them

Yeah, USB's are definitely great stuff . They have their problems too, of course.

- Kinda expensive, aren't they?

- Don't work with older computers, one of which I have downstairs soooo . . .

- Like -J said, tiny + fragile = asking for trouble (see also: cellphones as thick as the ace of clubs)

They're much easier to smuggle into a prison, though.

My still working well Sony mavica uses floppies and I have a lot of them and plan on using them for a long time to come.

There's problems with just about any type of storage. If you choose to back-up all your files on an online archive, you run the risk of being without your files if the place suddenly shuts down. Back them up on an external hard-drive and they are still prove to viruses. CD disks are easily stepped onr broken and lost. It's a bitch to edit on, which is why I used those mostly for music/programs.

USB sticks, so far, are the only thing I haven't had a headache with: no lost data and no corruption. And I'm certainly not stupid enough to keep it on my keyring =/

Ah, so young. So naive. Just wait, that day will come!

It's come a lot for me, and I treat mine like fucking gold .

^ Maybe OR just isn't their natural habitat?

I keep a usb drive on my keyring, and have never had any problems with it.

I don't keep anything important on it, just use it for shuffling files around but it takes a hell of a beating and keeps on going.

Can't use a CD or USB jump drive?!

You can get a 128MB pen drive for about $15.

They're no more fragile or prone to loss than a floppy. Actually, even less so. Especially if you're like me and back it up everytime you connect it to your home PC.

Sure, you can't use them on dinosaur PCs, but they're a heck of a lot more reliable than floppy disks.

*edit* haha.. I was wrong, you can get a 1GB jump drive for about $12 + shipping.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820189036

I've had the same jump drive for 3 years, a memorex 256mb. Has lasted much longer than any floppy disk that I've ever had.

I use SD cars and a USB adaptor because every mobile device I own (Cell Phone, PDA, Camera, etc.) uses SD cards. So, I keep six or eight 2GB SD cards in my messenger bag to keep everything straight.

Anyone tried to buy an SD card reader? Can't be done! I ended up having to buy a crazy 10-in-one reader to stick in a 3.5" external bay in order to get an SD reader. That was the smallest I could find too! I coulda had a 40-in-one for about 1 dollar more but the reviews were kinda sketchy.

I guess it isn't a huge deal since it was pretty cheap, but it irks me that since installing it, I now have all these extra drives displaying. And since it connects via a USB2.0 motherboard pinout, I have a huge fuckin list of drive letters under my "safely remove hardware" list.

Anyways... not a big deal, the thing cost about 20 bucks and it works great, just some general annoyances.

Yes, I have bought an SD/MMC Card reader. It works awesome and was dirt cheap as well. Plugs in just like a pen drive. All of my cameras use SD cards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820223069

Many stores locally don't even sell drives that small anymore (not on the shelves anyway), and considering 256 MB ones start at 20 to 25 dollars, the extram money is worth the investment.

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the reviews on that one seem pretty mixed. I'm pretty leery of new technology that's super cheap (IE, the DVD recorder I bought for 100 bucks last year that had piss recording quality and would start choping up after a half-hour of recording.)

Fuck, man. I was in a...Staples? Yeah, Staples, a couple months back. I'm checking out, and you know how they have impulse items at the register? They had, like a big plastic pail of like, 8M flash drives sitting there for like, $3 or something.

Talk about feeling old...when I started computing, 8M was inconceiveable. 256K was a lot of memory. Now you can just buy 8M of storage like a disposeable Bic pen or a pack of gum.

I remember when having a color printer was the big shit (To say nothign of being able to print or scan or copy). Back nine years ago, a color printer was about 250 bucks, and I remember my aunt was waiting for the price to drop before buying one and passed away before she ever did

I have a printer that scans, copies and prints that I broke a hundred dollar bill with.

And my first computer, which was ancient when I got it in '02, had less memory space than the current Video iPod