Floppy Disk Becoming Relic of the Past

JME2 · Post by **JME2** » 2004-09-07 12:56pm

Relics

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-07 01:02pm

the floppy's been on the way out since the invention of USB key drives. old news really.

JME2 · Post by **JME2** » 2004-09-07 01:07pm

Darth_Zod wrote:the floppy's been on the way out since the invention of USB key drives. old news really.

True; I just thought it was an interesting article.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2004-09-07 01:46pm

article wrote:And it's been a long time since floppy disks were even floppy. They used to come in a bendable plastic casing and were 5.25 inches wide, but Apple Computer Inc. pioneered the smaller, higher density disks with its Macintosh (news - web sites) computers in the mid-1980s.

bah, they used to be bendable plasitc casing and were 8 inches wide. 5.25 came later. i´ve still got a case of 8 inchers at home. they´re cool.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2004-09-07 01:51pm

It gets problematic, when you still have something that relies on floppies.
I had to order external floppies for laptops so the engineers working at the company I work for currently can share data with machines. No USB or other stuff. Floppies...

And another problem is, that tons of information gets lost. I had a colleague who was trying to get a 5.25'' floppy drive, so he could access his diploma thesis. He had luck. Give it a few years...

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-09-07 01:55pm

FLOPPY DISKS FOREVER!

They're too insanely useful to lose...

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-07 01:57pm

Rogue 9 wrote:FLOPPY DISKS FOREVER!

They're too insanely useful to lose...

i've found floppy disks largely useless in the past year or two. ever since i picked up a usb key drive i've never had to use a floppy. floppies are simply too slow, old and antiquated to really be practical anymore.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-09-07 01:58pm

Practical enough for my purposes, which mainly consist of moving Word documents and JPEG files.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-07 02:19pm

Rogue 9 wrote:Practical enough for my purposes, which mainly consist of moving Word documents and JPEG files.

3.5" floppies are cumbersome though. it's easier to carry about one 32 meg usb key, which fits snugly in a pocket or on a keyring, than it is to carry about 4 or 5 floppy disks which aren't as friendly to riding in your pocket. greater durability is a big boost as well, and USB drives aren't as likely to get damaged.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2004-09-07 03:32pm

Dahak wrote: I had a colleague who was trying to get a 5.25'' floppy drive, so he could access his diploma thesis. He had luck. Give it a few years...

Hahaha, the only 5.25" floppy drive (for a PC tower, not built in) I've seen was a few years ago, and I took it home to dismantle and compare it to a CD -ROM drive.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2004-09-07 03:38pm

My current system despite having both a DVD and CD rewritable drives, still has a 3.5 and 5.25 drive

Just cause I love the old fasion look(And they work to!

)

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2004-09-07 04:18pm

With networked computing environments and USB keychain drives, floppies are (thankfully) on their way out. Honestly, those things cause entirely too much trouble with data loss and corruption. Near the end of every semester, there's always some graduate student or freshman who comes in saying that he or she had a final project on that disk and now no computers will read it. We try and recover the data for them, but in 90% of the cases, it's gone for good, and I have to give them a lecture about why we provide them with network storage in the first place.

Although it's not all their fault, really. Dumb-shit English and CompSci teachers still mandate floppy disks for submitting assignments, which makes about as much sense as farting into a furnace. I wish we could institute a university-wide policy forcing teachers to drop floppy disks as a requirement for assignment submissions, no excuses, no exceptions. The CompSci department has a god damn web submit, and they require you to submit it both on there and on a floppy.

The great part about submitting things on a floppy is that you can intentionally corrupt it, hand it in and then force the god damn teacher to use the web submit data. Hey, floppies get corrupted pretty easily, after all. Nothing anyone can do about it.

Vohu Manah · Post by **Vohu Manah** » 2004-09-07 07:21pm

I use a small USB 2.0 external HD (only 2 gig, but it's was a cheap notebook drive in a cheap external case) for any file moving (between machines not on my network), since I usually move CD images from my computer to a friend's PC (I can usually e-mail him anything else, or just store it on my web space for him to grab).

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-09-07 07:45pm

I don't know, I still like floppies if only because I use the things for so many small things that just aren't worth burning to CD just to take to the computer lab or what not.

YT300000 · Post by **YT300000** » 2004-09-07 08:12pm

Darth_Zod wrote:
Rogue 9 wrote:Practical enough for my purposes, which mainly consist of moving Word documents and JPEG files.
3.5" floppies are cumbersome though. it's easier to carry about one 32 meg usb key, which fits snugly in a pocket or on a keyring, than it is to carry about 4 or 5 floppy disks

Try 22 floppies. That's how many you need to get almost 32 megs.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-09-07 09:11pm

I remember when 3.5" disks were reliable (this being the early to mid 1990s). No longer is that true -- those things will corrupt data if you so much as look at them.

But yeah, they're going the way of the dodo. Most of the CS profs here will accept a burned CD now since fewer and fewer students have disks.

mauldooku · Post by **mauldooku** » 2004-09-07 09:23pm

My main beef with Floppies is the weird habit they have of jamming in the drives. I went through several of them on a single project last year for this very reason, and while they can be handy in a pinch, USB keys are both easier to transport and more sturdy.

Mitth · Post by **Mitth** » 2004-09-07 10:13pm

Lacking one of those little USB drives, my floppy drive comes in handy.

My dad didn't get a floppy drive for his new computer because "you don't need floppies for anything nowadays anyway"... so many problems would have been solved much easier if he had access to a floppy drive.

Bugsby · Post by **Bugsby** » 2004-09-07 10:22pm

I think we should bring back those handy little punch-cards for storing data. Way before my time, but man, do those sound FUN!

PS. USB all de way

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-09-08 01:10am

Durandal wrote:Dumb-shit English and CompSci teachers still mandate floppy disks for submitting assignments,

English teachers? What sort of English assignment requires the student to submit a floppy disk?

Unless you're referring to something else...

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2004-09-08 06:30am

Haven't used a floppy in over a year now. I use my FTP for most things, or my USB key. I remember the days when one of us would download some cool MIDI's (mp3 was bearly around then, and wav was too big) and we'd stick them on floppy to transfer between friends. Memories.

Stofsk wrote:
Durandal wrote:Dumb-shit English and CompSci teachers still mandate floppy disks for submitting assignments,
English teachers? What sort of English assignment requires the student to submit a floppy disk? Unless you're referring to something else...

I would assume its because they want the actual file. Makes checking for things like plagerisim far easier if you can do things like copy paste.

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2004-09-08 06:58am

Ah floppy disks, the fun I had with you at school.

Usually involving the old crushed match head powder trick

(sniff)

Anyway.

I still use them, mainly for work to home transfer for stuff I've typed up on my lunch or something.

I'll probably switch to USB cards in a few years. I still have a working 486 computer you see....

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-09-08 09:05am

Stofsk wrote:English teachers? What sort of English assignment requires the student to submit a floppy disk? Unless you're referring to something else...

Many English professors here required that you send in an electronic as well as hard copy of your assignments.

Post by **RogueIce** » 2004-09-08 05:42pm

Floppies corrupt? Man, are these like new ones or something? I honestly can't remember them corrupting a lot. Even now when I pop in some I've had for a couple years.

These USB key chains intrigue me, however.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-08 05:47pm

RogueIce wrote:Floppies corrupt? Man, are these like new ones or something? I honestly can't remember them corrupting a lot. Even now when I pop in some I've had for a couple years.

These USB key chains intrigue me, however.

floppies are extremely easy to corrupt nowadays. i've had fairly brand new floppies wear out within a few uses before they went bad when using university computers.

USB drives have proven to be far more reliant and dependable in terms of data storage. to say nothing of ultimately cheaper and more efficient.