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Alternatives To The Floppy Disk?
"I'd like to experiment with something with at least 4 to 8MB capacity. I'd also obviously need a "drive" to allow reading / writing to the media. Ideally it'd be something you could mount inside a computer in a 3.5 inch drive bay. Regardless, as far as interfaces go USB is probably the best option. Cost-wise, the "drives" should be out there for $40 or less. (I've noticed Sandisk offers their USB CompactFlash drives for $29.99.) I'd prefer that the cost of the media be the "heavier" end of the solution.
CD-RWs are not an option for a few reasons, the main one being that CD-RW capable drives are still quite expensive. I'd like to avoid anything that includes as many mechanical components as the antique floppy disk / drive combination. We offer our students space on several file servers, but for many, many reasons the use of floppy disks remains commonplace. We are not a tech-heavy institution: the majority of the students could probably be considered "average" for their age group in terms of computer use. I guess in that sense, part of the reason floppy disks have stuck around is that they offer enough space to save a few documents, and do so in a small, easy-to-use package. However, after all these years, it would be nice to think that someone out there is pushing forward with a standardized, low-capacity, high-reliability alternative."
I can understand the problem with a lot of old disks being reused, and a lot of old drives being around that are maybe past their planned lifetime, but I'm having trouble on machines that are no more than 3 or 4 years old, some new a year ago. Has this being happening to anyone else, or am I just jinxed? :)
I do agree that the Zip disk is the closest thing to a floppy sucessor we have thus far, and is probably the best choice, but they are just a prone to failure. Just do a search for "Zip 'click of death'"
It would be great if the technology used in digital cameras would hit mainstream as a portable media, I don't know if you have seen a modern memory card but the thing is tiny! Its about as thick as a credit card, and the size of a quarter, and holds 16/32 megs. Might not seem too impressive to you yung'ins, but in my day..... ;)
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Gorkman
Not being one to trust anyone on anything, a few years ago, I (along with a colleague) decided to embark on a little experiment to see just how easy it was to render a floppy unreadable. We were concerned about everyday risks (and this guy happened to be doing some research that involved small electric motors). So we tried leaving them on top of monitors for a few minutes, leaving them on top of speakers, and moving the magnet end of the motors across the surface of the disk at various angles. There was one small Word file on this disk (on a Mac filesystem), and we used the same disk throughout. Despite repeated trials, especially with the otherwise powerful (in the paperclip sense) motor magnets, we were completely unable to erase the file or damage the filesystem.
I believe at the time our scientific conclusion was that floppies are not based on magnetism, but on "tiny bubbles of ectoplasmic phlogiston." We never tried the condition where the file was the sole copy of some critical document, I don't know if that would have affected the results.
Don't have any removable media on the computers. This will force them to save any documents on the file servers.
Obviously some users are going to complain "how can i take my work home to my home computer?"
Keep the floppy drives (cheap/free - you already have them) just somehow make it impossible to save directly to them, but make it easy to copy from the file server to floppy!
To sum up, force it into their thick skulls to keep multiple copies
Why don't you set up a storage server that's backed up nightly up by your university, and just let your students archive/retrieve their stuff on that storage server via the web?
Seastead this.
If you do use floppies regularly, you should be using them this way:
1) One-time file storage for temporary transfer. They are not permanent storage devices. This bears repeating until somebody silk-screens it on the front of t-shirts.
2) Do not carry the floppy around loose in your back pocket, wallet, purse, knapsack, book bag, pencil box, lunch box or thermos. A floppy disk is not a book mark. A front shirt pocket is perfect, if the disk is wrapped. If you have a plastic sleeve or floppy holder, use it. A Zip disk case will hold at least two floppies. This will increase the likelyhood that the floppy will work as intended and keep lint, sweat and fuzz out of the disk.
3) Do not work off/from the floppy. Copy the file you want over to the hard drive first, work on it there, then copy it back if necessary. This will prevent errors from interfering when saving your document. If you find that you cannot copy the document over, or you find that once the document is copied to the drive, there are problems or errors, you save yourself the grief of finding out later when you lose all the work you just did.
4) Consider using a "safety" folder on the disk which contains an extra copy of your important document. Do not make a duplicate of the folder already on the floppy. Instead, copy the document afresh from your hard drive to the safety folder. This is common practice in the creative world, a legacy from pre-Zip, pre-Jaz days when Syquests and floppies were standard.
5) If you don't have server access, consider mailing a copy of a document to yourself using free web email accounts. Make sure to use at least two services at a time as they are unreliable. This will allow you to avoid faulty or unworking floppy drives as well, which in a busy lab situation can mean the difference between getting right to work or waiting for the "good" machine.
Spread the word! Tell everyone! Post signs! How many times have I tried to explain that floppies are unreliable, tempermental and not to be trusted only to find that people don't believe me? They think I'm making it up. Really.
I used to run the IT department for an advertising agency in which one of the users saved *everything* to floppy because she believed her hard drive was untrustworthy. She had hundreds of disks. (Of course, this is the same woman who printed out all of her email messages and filed them alphabetically).
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
For the Thumb Drive, go here.
For a review of the Sony Memory Stick Reader, go here. Now, all you need to do, is to move the USB Ports to the front of the computers!
\\'ilson
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My mobile is automatically activated by the contact between the toilet seat and my ass...
How about handing out rio mp3 pocket players
I bet most people thought that was a joke. Including the author.
They were wrong.
http://www.dansdata.com/cfide.htm is a review of an interesting product: A Small, cheap adapter to let you use a CompactFlash memory card as a plain IDE drive. Only AU$38. It is doubtless availiable in the US from other suppliers, and a large order would probably be quite cheap.
Qoute: If you were wondering whether CompactFlash cards really could work as plain old IDE devices, this adapter ought to put your doubts to rest. The thing's just, essentially, a pin converter. 40 pin IDE connector on one side, standard pushbutton-eject CompactFlash socket on the other, power connector hanging off on a wire. It doesn't even have an activity light.
If you can put up with the cost of CompactFlash cards (Which can be very high, although I don't have any details to hand), you have here a very nice storage solution; just plug it into an IDE cable and tell Windows it's a removable disk drive and it's installed, and your students can get cards in a range of capacities, from one or two megabytes to 500+. It has no moving parts, so not only is it reliable, but it also provides VERY fast access. Solid state drive, anyone?
A lot of mention have been made in this discussion of zip disks. I would like to take this oppertunity to say: Noooooo! Zip disks suck! They often lock up and won't read, and the capacity is big for just holding documents, but too small to install your programs on.
If you don't mind about accessing files from non-school computers, why not set up your computers to create a mapped drive to \\server\username, where a user's files are? This would be easy to do, and could be like a floppy drive but without the floppy, and with a different drive letter. People wouldn't be able to use zip disks or whatever on thier home computers either, so this would work quite well if people have individual usernames. You'd also be able to see who's saving pr0n to disks on the school's connection.
Other than that, I'm not sure what to suggest. There's lots of potential solutions out there, and wrtten elsewhere in the discussion. I'd take a look at them.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Yes! Definitiely perform periodic cleaning, maintenance, and testing of the public floppy drives! At least give your students a fighting chance to have a drive that CAN write reliably to their media.
But, it seems to me that the problem is that the errors were made SILENTLY. So, the real question may be: "How can a user know, immediately, when there's a problem?"
Under DOS or a Windows command prompt, you can use this command to copy a file, and, at the same time, verify the copy matches the source:
Though I don't know if it is true, today, but one used to be able to issue this command (IIRC) under DOS in your autoexec.bat file to force the system to verify every single file that was written: (NOTE: I almost exclusively use the CLI so I have no idea if this setting is recognized when using drag-and-drop to copy files.)Further defensive techniques
Floppies are also fragile, VERY fragile. Left alone in the best circumstances they'll often bitrot in a few months. In the chaotic rough-n-tumble treatment of a students life they'll often last mere weeks reliably.
Number one killer of floppies by students? Headphones.
Particularly headphones dumped in the same backpack. HELLO - these are MAGNETS!!!! (Yes, /.'ers are rolling they're eyes but you wouldn't believe how many hs/college students have no idea of this & are shocked when told.)
Number two killer? Abused out-of-alignment floppy drives.
Particularly common on school computers these beaten-up drives caked full-o-crud are a disaster. US$5 mechanisms reading cheap warped floppies covered in crap, spending years filtering dust into their mechanisms, only to have a floppy get stuck inside and then pried out with the ungentle aid of some improvised tools & a panicking user. Machine A will write something that Machine B can't read but Machine D has a 50% of reading. It gets worse from there.
Third most common killer? Simple physical abuse of the floppy.
Repeated physical shocks. Detritus sifting in through the shutter while at the bottom of the 'pack. Being left in a sunny place to cook, dumped in a cold car trunk to freeze. Then of course there's the classic "Pepsi Syndrome".
So, what are the alternatives?
Super-High-density floppies have come & gone for several cycles. None have caught on, none likely will. Their limitations are all of the floppies limitations and their limited distribution doesn't make up for their extra capacity. Most folks don't care if you can save 4 or 50 meg on a floppy if you can't use it anywhere else.
Zip drives are all of the worst qualities of a floppy (slow, unreliable, same media but more fragile mechanism.) They're poorly built & at the end of their technology lifecycle anyhow. Many corporations are rueing the days they rolled them out en masse and are now banning their use for any critical material.
Orb drives? Sort of an "ultra-Zip" built by the refugees from SyQuest they've distinguished themselves with a delayed rollout, expensive media, and poor drivers. They're faster then the Zips but suffer all of the same media problems along with even less distribution.
Burnable CD's are less fragile but the burner costs more and in the hands of the unwary can often create "coasters" (don't interfere excessively with their disk access!) There's software available that does packet-writing to the CD and thus it appears to be simply another mounted drive (albeit a slow one) but it can be unstable itself & produces disks that aren't universally readable.
Portable hard drives were one idea for awhile. There was even a "DriveBay" spec that was floated. Unfortunately nobody ever really got behind it and it's died. One can still retrofit PC's with a similar sort of chassis to slot-load drives but they'll only accept certain designs.
SCSI drives are a long-time favorite of the Mac & publishing communities but with Apple's move from SCSI they too have waned. USB drives were popular for a week 'till folks discovered how painfully s-l-o-w they are. Firewire/1394/iLink (all different names for the same high-speed serial bus) have potential but their drives command a hefty newtech surcharge.
IBM makes an incredible line of microdrives ranging from 340 MB to 1 GB. These can be mounted in PCMCIA/Credit Card devices and slipped into laptops (& retrofitted desktops) but they also cost a bucket.
Unfortunately all of these drives share something in common - they're hard drives and to a great extent share their limitations. Abuse them a bit & they'll fail catastrophically. Even the ruggedized ones made for laptops have limitations that are daily exceeded in a student's life.
Solid State. The future of storage. It'll also require you to mortgage your future to buy. If you're gonna require folks shell out US$50-$200 for a chip it should hold enough to make it through the semester. Unfortunately that's not true of solid-state, not at today's prices and with MS Word files bloating to 20 MB each for a sigle major paper.
So, what to do?
Well, as you've seen once you abandon the floppy the choices are all either just-as-fragile, more expensive, and much less universal. Folks are using floppies 'cause they have them at home, in the dorm, at their off-campus jobs, etc. This won't work for exotic tech like the ones listed above. They all require significant costs to retrofit each campus machine plus each student must purchase the media for it and then it's pretty much useless or at least a major pain off campus...
As many, many folks have pointed out: Dump the media almost altogether.
Install a few central servers easily network-accessible and well maintained. Put a few well-maintained floppy drive equipped machines in each cluster of computers but otherwise drop support for them. Give all of the students a card detailing how to access them from both on-campus or from off-campus (home, work, other institutions, etc.) Teach all of the faculty how to accept material electronically. Set up special time-stamping directories with automated receipts so there's no "I emailed my assignment on time but you didn't get it" problems. Make sure the student's directories on the server's really are trivially accessible once they've gone through the password challenge, again both on & off campus. Support Windows networking, AppleShare IP, FTP, simple web-based access & WEBDAV, etc.
Novell Netware is fantastic at supporting large communities of users like this & has great educational pricing. Windows NT is popular for it's ubiquity & commonality with other installed systems on the campus. Linux is of course cheapest & infinitely flexible. Talk to your neighboring institutions to see what they're using & their experiences, attend a few conferences, you'll quickly get a good feel for where the trends are heading and what tools you really want to look into.
Wean folks from the physical-media habit. Yes, this will require a new set of skills on their part and things like passwords, encryption, & network security will now become much more important. On the other hand that all needed to be done anyway & in the long run is probably cheaper the supporting all of those floppy drives and their fried floppies.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.