Floopy Drives Must Die

[KayKay]

pfft, im putting 2 floppies in my new computer

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: Kensai
Hopefully, very soon.

 

[LeatherNeck]

I disconnected my floppy on my desktop and don't even have one for my notebook.

I remember I used to rely exclusively on floppy drives to hold my data but would always be paranoid about losing the data so I would switch disks fairly often since the media would wear out. Others I worked with would just keep using the darn things until they lost all their data when the thing wore out.

I can't even remember the last time I used a floppy disk at this point.

 

[Jeff7]

1. You can update your MOBO bios just by burning the image on a CDR/CDRW or even using a USB drive.

Unless you've got a Compaq Presario, and the upgrades come downloaded as floppy disk image files.
Even if they could be extracted, it takes maybe a minute to write the data to the floppy, which I have all over the place. USB thumbdrive, no idea where mine is. CD-RW.....somewhere, but not handy. Time to write a CD-RW, much longer - create bootable floppy, set Nero to use the floppy as the bootable drive, then write the data.

Floppy drives still have some utility in their simplicity. Granted, they have limited capacity, and they're slow as all hell, but they are exceptionally cheap. You can easily afford to buy a bunch of them somewhere and stash a bunch in each room. Always a floppy handy that way. It's more expensive than stashing a thumbdrive in each room (which I still can't seem to make bootable).


I wish LS-120's would have caught on sooner. 120MB disks and the drives read floppy disks faster than a regular drive. But ZIP was out first, and was already established.


And, the poll, I voted 5 years, and USB Drives. I hope by that time, flash technology will be exceptionally cheap, and BIOSes will have the ability to easily boot off of USB drives - keyword there is "easily."

 

[Schadenfroh]

After all these years, i do believe they will be immortal as long as so many freaking MOBO makers and microsoft force you to use a floppy to install and update certain things (firmware/sata drivers)

But i want them to die, NOW.

 

[Cruise51]

It will be a decade before floppy drives are gone for good.

 

[teutonicknight]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew

Originally posted by: Kensai
Hopefully, very soon.

:thumbsup:

Haven't had a floppy on any of my computers for 7 years.

The only thing I like about floppies is their smaller size compared to CD's (have you ever tried to fit a CD in your pocket ?)

 

[bob4432]

i was sad that the internal superidsks never took on, they were excellent.

 

[bfonnes]

I like my floppy drive... can't beat it for that bios backup disk...

Edit: I would rather get rid of the BIOS, then my floppy is obsolete.

Edit2: btw, how much for your ATI Radeon 9800 Pro? email me, bob4432

BFonnes

 

[imported_goku]

I don't think I will build a computer with out a FDD drive. The people who say they don't need FDD drives are generally ignorant about the usefulness. People have no idea how much trouble I've had with my new IBM laptop NOT having a FDD drive. It is very very irritating when I bring my laptop somewhere to fix one's computer and the only way to get data on the computer is VIA a FDD. I have the info on the laptop but can't get it on the damn broken computer GRR!

I find uses for FDD drives all the time like when I need to get drivers on a computer for the ethernet, have the drivers only on a FDD, computer can't communicate with network because lack of drivers in Windows XP, CATCH 22! Only way to get drivers on computer is by the network, need network drivers in order to do so. (CD Drive doesn't read CDRs)

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: bfonnes
I like my floppy drive... can't beat it for that bios backup disk...

Edit: I would rather get rid of the BIOS, then my floppy is obsolete.

Edit2: btw, how much for your ATI Radeon 9800 Pro? email me, bob4432

BFonnes

emailed

 

[Brentx]

The only reason I need a floppy drive is to install the nForce 3 RAID drivers for windows. Otherwise, I have a 512MB thumb drive I use for everything else. If anyone knows a way of slipstreaming the nforce 3 files into the windows installer, so it doesn't ask me at the blue screen boot up, please let me know

 

[Sonikku]

I skipped on a floppy drive with my PC, Getting a DVD rom instead.

I get my computer and I can't use it because I can't get my bios working with my mother board.

 

[Ricemarine]

Floppy is required...

Until there are easiers way the get into DOS and flash items, along with installing raid drivers, floppy is still the way to go.

 

[DLBlank]

DVD-RAM is good i have it, Like a 4gb+ and faster floppy!

 

[Jeff7181]

I don't think the floppy drive will be gone until the BIOS is gone.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
I don't think the floppy drive will be gone until the BIOS is gone.

Or at least upgraded considerably. I don't know why we don't see more BIOSes like I had on a Pentium II board, a Supermicro P6SLA. It had a GUI for the BIOS, with mouse support. Some old laptops (like, 486 level) had this, but they used a hidden partition on the hard drive to do it. The P6SLA had no such thing.
So a BIOS can be made to look like that.
Now, back to the floppy issue.
Look at how easy it is to use the drive. Any OS can recognize it without installing special drivers. I am not sure if that's because any basic OS has "floppy drivers" in it, or because motherboards have standardized the floppy interface so well.
In either case, USB thumbdrives can really take off when they do not require OS intervention to recognize them. Plug it in, BIOS sees it, and grants access, such that even a bare-bones DOS boot disk could recognize it, assuming a compatible file system is used.
It'd also be especially useful if you could just make it a system disk, like you do for floppies in Windows Explorer.

Simply put, something naturally needs to have the features of a floppy drive and disk before it can replace them. For the details outlined in my posts, I don't think that USB thumbdrives, or CD-RWs quite have this level of usefulness yet.
I can't comment on DVD-RAM much, as I don't have a drive that supports it - which is part of its problem. There aren't a lot of PCs out there that can both read and write to it.

 

[BFG10K]

Zip drives have already been dead for years. The trend is that FDDs will eventually be replaced by USB flash drives.

 

[DrZoidberg]

if usb pen drives were able to be bootable then yes floppy will die and good riddance. however usb not supported in dos right and only in windows when u install the motherboard drivers like sata and usb controller. i have a 512mb flash drive its very convenient, all the advantages of bigger storage and fast access times like cd and rewritable forever and size of a key and scratch proof.

 

[ironique]

Floppy drive?? What's a floppy drive??

 

[imported_g33k]

Floppy disks are an undependable media. Your data can get lost so easily on a floppy, I wouldnt take the chance. Sometimes I have NO idea why the floppy drive will not read my disk! Random erros such as "disk not formatted or has been formatted for a Macintosh." A Macintosh!!!! I don't own a stinking Macintosh.

I've learned my lesson, I don't use floppy disks anymore. They are bad bad bad. Just burn a cd, they are way more dependable. Floopy disks are just too unstable. I would use them only as a last resort.

 

[dakels]

IMO it's not the plublic consumer keeping floppies alive, its the damn manufacturers and DOS. Honestly th eonly time I ever hear someone need a floppy is for a bios update or some stupid program demanded it or utility software came with some floppy. The end users all send floppy size files via email and use UBS flash or etc. Honestly with most email systems having a 10mb+ attachement limit nowadays and 250mb+ mailboxes online, why would anyways resort to a floppy? If you want to argue costs CD media is about the same price as retail floppy packs in a staples or something. In fact I got gouged to hell when I went to staples and needed a stupid floppy for a bios update. A 10-pack of floppies cost me like $6 and the drive cost me $30 and I had no choice, it was all they had. I was fuming mad but it was that or leave my bios/comp crippled for a few days waiting for an online order. (slipstreaming and CD image, USB floppy wasnt working with my Gigabyte bios)

 

[Random73421]

I only own one PC without a floppy. All others I have built, for myself or others, include a floppy.
They can't hurt at all, if anything, they help in emergency situations.
Hell, one of my old Linux machines has a 5.25" drive to read C64 disks.

Edit: I have that Supermicro board mentioned above with the AMI windowed BIOS. It's horrible. It just makes everything a pain. Simpler will always be better...

 

[RaiderJ]

I wish they would go away, but I still use them for booting into diagnostic stuff like mem86 and partition magic. Tried and failed to set up a USB flash drive to do that. Anyone have a simple way of setting up a flash drive in order to make it bootable?

 

[Rike]

Where's the poll tab for "I don't care."?