PC World says Farewell to Floppy

Good riddance!

Floppies were terribly unreliable. I can't remember the number of times I have relied on a floppy to transfer information from one place to another, only to find that it was corrupted when I got where I was going. I got so paranoid that I'd always make 2 copies, in case one didn't work.

Steve,

Ditto

But what an improvement they were over the 5 1/4" floppy floppies.

And, the first year or so of the IBM PC it had a connector on the back for a regular cassette tape player!

CDs, DVDs and USB memory sticks are great.

I remember getting one game for my kids that had 16 1.4 MB 3 1/2" floppies! What a pain that was. Other software was on 6-8 of them.

Greg

I still have some old 5 1/4 drives in the basement ! I wonder if there's a museum somewhere that wants 'em ?

I'd say you were unlucky. I still use floppies at work every day. We have about 20 that we transfer data from one computer to another, and lose less than 1 per year. I understand PC World's point though. They don't hold much for todays programs, and CDs are cheap. I firmly believe that Windows NT and newer OSs destroy floppies that would otherwise be good, especially when you try to format an older format to a newer one.

We can't get computers with floppies in them at work anymore thanks to IT and upper management, so we have to rob the floppies from the old machines! Recently I tried to put 2 floppies in my Pentium III, and found that the BIOS would only support 1 floppy!

The flash drives today hold 100+ times as much data, so floppies are on the way out.

StandardsGuy

SatndardsGuy,

Still using "sneakernet" .... wow!

Haven't your IT guys heard of "real" networks?

Greg

I'm REALLY hoping the windows vista installer doesn't require a floppy for raid drivers....this and other hardward manufacturers that make their little diagnostic cds that create a boot floppy disk....oh brother, get with the times!

Newer technologies are always better but I've had issues with the physical durability of usb sticks...electronically they're great but a water proof casing would be nice (for those torrential downpours we get stuck in and the ol' briefcase becomes the umbrulla) and a wee bit of flexibility would be great as I will move my laptop and the usb stick poking out of the back of it will catch something and break the male connector off the front...or at least sever some of the soldered connectors. I've had to reflow mine with a heat gun several times to get the data off of it. I think with the amount of data we can put on these little babies deserves a better, more robust design.

I had a memeory stick go through the washer and dryer unscathed.

Wow! You really sound down about memory sticks. When in actuality, they're the best thing since the dawn of the computer age. I've come up with a few suggestions to help make your experiences better when using a memory stick.   Suggestion#1: Don't use your briefcase as an umbrella ... use an umbrella. How does enough water get into your briefcase to possibly ruin your memory stick? Is that the only thing that gets ruined in your briefcase? What about important paperwork that shouldn't get wet? So many questions, so little time to answer them. Anyways ...   Suggestion#2: Don't go mobile with your laptop while leaving the memory stick plugged in. Do you leave Q-tips stuck in your ear when you're done using them?   Suggestion#3: And last but not least, the comment on durability. Use it for what it's made to withstand physically. Plug it in ... unplug it ... plug it in ... unplug it. Stop me if I lose you on this. Plug it in ... unplug it ...   PLEASE NOTE: Do NOT to use your memory stick as an ice scraper, a hammer or as a replacement for the spoon to stir your latte. Rather, think of it as a media storage device that, unlike that of the floppy disk, has exceedingly far greater memory storage capabilities which, you'd think, would demand greater care by the occupant.   I hope this helps clear up what a storage device should be used for and what it should NOT be used for.

Gosh! I must be the luckiest person in the world! I used litteraly thousands of floppies and never had even one fail! I was a teacher at a community college and routinely had students turn in their assignments (programs) on floppies and never had even one slightly corrupted one. Maybe I am not lucky, maybe I just followed the manufacturer's guidelines on care and treatment...

That you never had problems surprises me, as I had many over the years, but most often related to recording on one computer and reading on another, back and forth. I do know, I had far less problems when the floppy was only written to by one computer.

However I do know that much of the problems had to do with the floppy drives themselves, and their subtle differences. Also, there were even subtleties with the computers themselves, operating system, and settings such as the buffered write options which could contribute to a greater possibility of a corrupted write operation in some circumstances.

Some of us "mature" folks remember 8" floppies, just like the 5-1/4" version but bigger (with less memory) . They were used as storage on software development hardware and IBM data processing equipment. Ahhh those whirring drives !

I might have a couple of those drives in the basement too

Good luck trying to get disks for them anymore!