To Geeks the floppy disk is more than just an old storage medium indicative of days gone past, but instead is an icon of an era when you really needed to know your stuff to operate a PC. Motherboards required jumpers, IRQ settings were still important, and the world was a magical place where an entire lifetime of important documents finally fit on a plastic disk that could slip easily into your pocket. If like me and you harbor a bit of nostalgia for the vintage 3.5-inch floppies, you might want to pickup a box now before they disappear completely.
According to Sony, who is the only remaining manufacturer of 3.5-inch floppies, production will end in March 2011 effectively killing off the technology once and for all. Inexpensive CDs, DVDs, and USB thumb drives are cited as key reasons why, but I'm sure everyone knew it was only a matter of time. Global disk sales have dropped from 47 million a year in 2002 to just 12 million in 2009 and the drive itself hasn't been standard on most PCs since around 2003. I'm sure decades from now you'll still be able to find the odd person still booting off one, but don't count on seeing them at your local retailer past mid next year.
Anyone out there still using them?
To answer the last question, yeah, the government does. In order to better display how hosed up government IT is, I have a Iomega Zip drive sitting on one of my workstations here.
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
A scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise standing on?'
'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'
There's actually a security reason for some uses of 1.44meg floppies over rewritable DVDs/CDs and Flashdrives. You can't copy much unauthorized information with one of those. It's not entirely just because 'Lol gov inefficiency'. Just partially.
JointStrikeFighter wrote:
Except the video even says a single backup copy is legal. Retard.
I posted an ultra cheesy 90's PSA of the lamest rapper ever prancing around on screen shouting don't copy that floppy, and you thought I was seriously telling Stark off for suggesting that somebody backed up their floppy discs. The forum has just hit a new low.
A scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise standing on?'
'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'
salm wrote:I´m surprised that they still sold 12 million 3.5s in 2009.
Given the huge installed base and terrible reliability, you shouldn't be.
Yeah, I can imagine some shops will be stockpiling crates of them, rather than think about modernizing their equipment in any way.
Others will probably not hear a word about it until one day when they try to order new floppies for their ancient industrial computer or something and fly into a total panic when they're told "there aren't any more, they've stopped making them", instantly abusing the shit out of the poor phone jockey and then going on a screaming tirade throughout the office.
"There is no "taboo" on using nuclear weapons." -Julhelm
What is Project Zohar? "On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it."- RogueIce explaining that episode ratings on SDN tv show threads are bunk
I can't remember the last time I physically handled a floppy. Though I think one of my company's clients actually sent us survey data on some floppies once; naturally we don't have a single machine with a floppy drive.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
My family bought its first computer in 1997 and we had a handful of floppies with it, but 98% of the media storage it used was CD-ROM by that time anyway. The last one I ever saw was a crappy Independence Day video game coded to a floppy that was corrupt anyway.
That being said, I imagine floppy discs are way more prevalent else where. Computers are fairly prevalent throughout the world but the latest most up-to-date computers generally aren't.
But how will I install OS/2 Warp 4 if I don't have floppies with which to make the boot disks?
"Stop! No one can survive these deadly rays!"
"These deadly rays will be your death!"
- Thor and Akton, Starcrash
"Before man reaches the moon your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missiles.... We stand on the threshold of rocket mail."
- Arthur Summerfield, US Postmaster General 1953 - 1961
A few years ago, my OS shit the bed (XP SP2 upgrade error, I think it was) and took my CD-ROM drives with it. Rebooting for a floppy was my only recourse, so I still keep a handful of them on hand, as well as a USB external floppy drive for my laptop.
I'll abandon them completely when computers don't have the option to boot from A:\, but until then - better safe than sorry.
I still have a floppy drive, too, on an old desktop from 2001. However, I pretty much rid myself of all my floppy disks when I started in university, so it hasn't actually seen any use in the past six years. Since that time, I have been using USB memory sticks for all my data transfer needs (I think I still have my old 64 MB one lying around, somewhere...). Long before then, I had also been using CD-RW discs to store all my huge files, so even at that time my floppies were close to meeting their permanent ends.
"I could while away the hours, conferrin' with the flowers, consultin' with the rain.
And my head I'd be scratchin', while my thoughts were busy hatchin', if I only had a brain!
I would not be just a nothin', my head all full of stuffin', my heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry, life would be would be a ding-a-derry, if I only had a brain!"
Drooling Iguana wrote:But how will I install OS/2 Warp 4 if I don't have floppies with which to make the boot disks?
It's actually much worse than that. You can't install Windows XP from a stock installation CD without a floppy drive if you need third party drivers for the installation; typically hard disk controller drivers. For example early SATA controllers had no drivers on the installation CD of Windows XP prior to SP3 and the same applied to some newer SCSI and SAS controllers. The only way to install third party drivers during the XP installation is to use a floppy drive. The Windows NT installer (XP is NT 5.1) had not changed much after Windows NT 4.0 came out in 1996, even though in 2001 the floppy drive was already clearly on its way out.
To be fair, this installation quirk was never a major problem for most users, who bought their computers with XP preinstalled, or for larger organizations which used customized installation CDs or network install images, but it was a fairly major pain for DIY hobbyists and small organizations. Of course Microsoft never expected the XP to last as long as it did, but even in 2001 the installer was badly outdated and should have been replaced by a more flexible one already in Windows 2000.
Drooling Iguana wrote:But how will I install OS/2 Warp 4 if I don't have floppies with which to make the boot disks?
It's actually much worse than that. You can't install Windows XP from a stock installation CD without a floppy drive if you need third party drivers for the installation; typically hard disk controller drivers. For example early SATA controllers had no drivers on the installation CD of Windows XP prior to SP3 and the same applied to some newer SCSI and SAS controllers. The only way to install third party drivers during the XP installation is to use a floppy drive. The Windows NT installer (XP is NT 5.1) had not changed much after Windows NT 4.0 came out in 1996, even though in 2001 the floppy drive was already clearly on its way out.
You can slipstream SATA drivers (and service packs, and updates) into the Windows install folders and create your own installation CDs. I only ever used a floppy disk during install once, several years ago.
"There is no "taboo" on using nuclear weapons." -Julhelm
What is Project Zohar? "On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it."- RogueIce explaining that episode ratings on SDN tv show threads are bunk
JointStrikeFighter wrote:
Except the video even says a single backup copy is legal. Retard.
I posted an ultra cheesy 90's PSA of the lamest rapper ever prancing around on screen shouting don't copy that floppy, and you thought I was seriously telling Stark off for suggesting that somebody backed up their floppy discs. The forum has just hit a new low.
I actually do have a floppy disk in my gaming computer, it's the last part remaining from the first gaming computer i assembled about 10 years ago, and since motherboards and power supplies keep supporting it i just keep installing it. Haven't used it in years, though, wouldn't miss it. I've long since compiled every game, document and app i stored in floppies into, like, one or two CDs.
Simplicius wrote:A few years ago, my OS shit the bed (XP SP2 upgrade error, I think it was) and took my CD-ROM drives with it. Rebooting for a floppy was my only recourse, so I still keep a handful of them on hand, as well as a USB external floppy drive for my laptop.
I'll abandon them completely when computers don't have the option to boot from A:\, but until then - better safe than sorry.
You can boot from CD, USB, network, etc. The only thing these can't do that's provided by a floppy is 'gather dust', 'make shitloads of noise' and 'fail data integrity checks'.
