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The Death of the Floppy Disk
vook writes "Long the most common way to store letters, homework and other computer files, the floppy disk is going the way of the horse upon the arrival of the car: it'll hang around but never hold the same relevance in everyday life. "
When is the death of "Death of..." articles going to come? They are usually wrong, and are always annoying.
Since when should people be listening to Bill Gates, aside from when he points out the obvious? Quotes from the article:
"Apple become the first mass-market computer manufacturer to stop including floppy drives altogether with the release of their iMac model in 1998."
then it said....
"Bill Gates recently predicted the DVD would be obsolete within a decade."
Obvious, really, but shouldn't they be listening to Apple, if they were the first to really see such a trend in the market and drop the floppy? Since when has Microsoft, or Bill Gates, *led* the industry in anything new?
"This just in! IBM builds the best stuff in the world, but let's interview Tandy PC makers for their opinion instead!".
The rational for such logic escapes me.
Also, the title of the article should have been "The SLOW death of the floppy disk." It wasn't until USB flash drives came out that people felt comfortable with replacing their floppy. (IMHO)
Does SP2 cause bovine lesbianism?
I'd much rather use a USB key than a floppy anytime. More space, more convenient to carry. Did I mention more space?
I guess apple had the right idea a while back when they stopped using floppies... It might have been a little bit early though, before the huge rise of usb memory drives.
Wow, this might have been newsworthy ... about ten years ago. You might as well have said "processors are getting faster!"
I mean, seriously.
The first company to ship and popularize Sony's revolutionary 3.5" hard-case floppy drives and disks, and...
The first company to realize that the floppy was dead, and that it was time to wisely move consumers away from it.
(Not to mention the first computers[1] to include USB, FireWire, etc. - and wise enough to eliminate ancient legacy ports at the same time.)
Many consumers weren't *ready* to give up floppies in 1998, but it was more out of fear than actual need. The PC industry even played into that fear with the iMac, scaring customers with it's lack of a floppy drive. And 5 years later, the PC industry followed along. Hmm, 5 years...that seems about right...
[1] Yes, yes, someone will come up with some retarded example about some other obscure thing that was "first", but let's face it: Apple was the first to mainstream technologies in so many of these realms. "First" to 802.11? No, but the first to force prices of access points down from over $1000 to under $300, and cards from $300 to under $100, and to include integrated wireless in its laptops and desktops...and then everyone else followed in earnest a couple years later. "First" to 64-bit on the desktop? No, but some random company someone has never heard of ("BOXX TECHNOLOGIES") doesn't really count, and Apple's G5 orders far eclipsed any other 64-bit *desktop* offering from any vendor the first day it was introduced. "First" to an online music store? No, but the first one to receive widespread press and the first one to not completely and utterly blow that normal people can (and actually do) use. Let's face the facts: like it or not, Apple is the innovator here, and one of very, very few in the industry.
Is it just me, or does everyone else have like 50% failure rate on floppies? I'm not talking about abused ones, I'm talking about ones I keep in a case on my desk. They just... suck. With how common broadband is now, and with USB drives and bootable CDs, there's just no reason to use them anymore. Good riddance.
... as long as I still have old 486's and Pentiums lying around for gateways and cheap storage, I will gladly use floppy disks as a boot medium. =]
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
BTW: fp?
No. They're not. Using a floppy disk to store data is like storing your possessions outside under a 6-foot-by-6-foot blue tarp with a rock on each corner--you could, and tarps are readily available, but with so many more convenient, safer, and more capacious places to put your data, why would you?
Get a USB key (under $30). Let me know next time you need a floppy disk.
Install Windows XP to a non-southbridge SATA or IDE RAID controller without giving it the driver floppy, I'll believe that they're dead.
Until then, though, floppy drives cost $10. I will put one in each compute I build.
(or, alternately, I'll buy the $29 combo floppy drive w/ USB media reader)
When I see a "Boot from USB storage device" in the Bios boot menu, then I'll believe floppies are gone.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
A lot of vendors started discarding serial ports on laptops as well. This proves difficult if you need to debug a lot of, say, RS-485 stuff using your laptop (on-site), and can't use an USB-to-Serial converter to make sure you are not introducing any interface-quirks with that. The next port is probably the ieee-1284 (parallel) - everyone has a USB-printer nowadays anyway.
In someway this is OK, but there will and should always remain a small segment of the market devoted to (a correct implementation of!) these "obsolete" technologies to make sure applications relying on them can still be debugged in the future...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
What I find most amusing about these "Floppy/Dot Matrix/Dial up/Paul is dead" articles is that they seem to picture the process of becoming actually obsolete as in not used anymore -or being replaced by a double- as an industry decision, and not consumers'. There is more at becoming obsolete that not being profittable anymore at all for the companies producing the product; not even having been outpaced in capabilities and the price/mb ratio by optical drives a long, long time ago -in a store near, near your place- or even since the beggining, floppies will last. But I'm talking obvious for the ./ crowd here, perhaps.
O make me a mask
Of my three computers (1 mac, 1 sony & 1 emachine) only one has a floppy. It's a detachable drive for a Sony laptop and I don't even remember where it is. I've been without floppy drives for quite a while now, and hadn't even noticed it until someone else pointed it out.
Everyone talks about CD-Rs and keychain drives replacing floppies, but I believe the network sealed the fate of the floppy long before keychain drives became popular.
Obsoletism is quite relative when it comes to computing. Something isn't completely obsolete until it's no longer used at all. However I know many instances where people use older systems with bootable linux distros as routers, firewalls, webservers, and the like. Floppy disks maybe old, but they work. It won't be until the USB technology is expanded to the point that all motherboards recognize mass media drives in the boot process (in the event that the cdrom isn't working, or one isn't present such as systems employed in high security locations i.e. langly,White sands, etc...), will floppy drives have no use at all. However even then the use of floopys in older systems, and thin clients will still be relavent. Honestly I don't think that the floopy will be completely obsolete for quite a many years to come.
The wired is really the same thing as the real world.
As long as Symantec Ghost defaults to booting from floppies I will always have a use for floppies. Yeah I know you can make a bootable Ghost CD, but man that's a pain....
I'm ALMOST ready to solely rely on a USB memory stick. I have one and use it personally all the time, but I work in a corporate environment where the admins have locked down the system, and you can't install ANY drivers. There are still a few Win98 boxes left around, and even XP isn't fully installed with some of the more obvious drivers.
When I first bought the USB stick, I had all the intention of it being the main portable memory device. Until I found out it wouldn't work on the majority of the computers I use in the office. I still use an odd mix of floppies and CD-Rs.
The one aspect that I liked about the floppy that I still don't see is universal availability. Floppies are cheap, and worked on (almost) all machines at the time. You were safe to assume that a machine had a floppy drive. As a matter of fact, you never even bothered to think twice about it. I'm sure USB sticks will get there, eventually, but right now there's no guarantee that the machine you attend even has a USB port. Some machines have restrictions that won't allow driver installations, which renders the USB stick into a glorified key-chain. CD's are the only universal item that I trust, so when I absolutely certainly need to have a certain item available during travel to an unknown location, I make sure I have a CD of it with me.
All in all, I must say the floppy was quite the invention, it was long lived (longer than CD-Rs, for sure, which will probably die out much faster), worked great, was durable, cheap, and available. That's one peripheral that's gonna be hard to beat!
What if I need to load an external driver for my SATA / SCSI controller during the installation of Windows 2000 / XP ?
I'm Canadian, and I hardly see floppies anywhere these days. But I'm willing to bet that in developing nations, floppy disks continue to be used as the primary portable media. They're cheap, small, light, and relatively reliable. I doubt that the (as an example) Romanian government hands out USB keychains to its employees.
The article may have wanted to take that into account.
CDRW's should have been drag and drop write/erase like any other media since day one, and if they couldnt do it on day one, then day two. But this is what, year 5? It's why ZipDrives, even at their insane failure rates and price per meg are still popular with many people, because they've performed the miracle of "being able to drag and drop and erase from it". What's so hard about making that happen with Windows/Linux even at the very lowest level (as in, from a command line, safe mode, whatever).
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Hmm, how about when I'm trying to transfer files to that old OS/2 system that doesn't have USB support?
Or when the old PC I installed Linux on goes down and the BIOS doesn't allow for booting from a USB drive?
How about when I'm updating the BIOS of the afforementioned PC and need a way to boot and load the new firmware?
Oh, and the real kicker, how about when the solder on the connector on my $30 USB drive cracked and was no longer making contact?
No, I'm not being a smart ass. I've encountered every one of these situations.
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
So how do you use webmail without an internet connection?
Need em for:
:)
1) Flashing the BIOS
2) in a corporate environment, they're very useful when you're about to ghost a machine
3) initial stages of setting up dual boot to linux from windows
4) running partitionmagic
5) anytime you need to load something other than the OS that's already on the box
Yes, you might be able to use a CD or a USB device or even PXI boot for the above, but with older boxes, you still need the floppy.
3. USB keys universally work across all platforms and OS's
.img files, a menu should be presented with which image to boot.
The only problem I see with this is USER-acceptance. I believe the past two versions of the linux kernel, Windows, and MacOS support the USB Key just fine. However, the problem lies not in the manufactures of the OS, but the user's inability to upgrade their Windows 95/NT machines despite it being a 10 year old OS.
4. ALL OEMs stop relying on floppies for ANYTHING (Dell for example)
This is a problem that relies on the manufacturer of the key/bios. If Dell wishes to have a bootable image to load some proprietary OS/software so they are 100% sure that its not corrupted when it loads into YOUR bios, then more power to them. However, upon booting to the machine/key, should it recognize one or more
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
I know, isn't it funny how you feel wasteful and dirty for burning a CD with less than about 100MB? I feel the same way sometimes, but thinking about how much floppy disks cost (~$1 or so last I noticed) and how little CDs do (I never buy them more expensive than $10 for 50, so that makes them $0.20 or less)...it's more wasteful to put a 1MB file on a floppy than on a CD...given the short usable lifetime of every floppy I've used in the past 7-8 years, they might as well be write-once, so spending a dollar for 1MB is much more wasteful/foolish than spending 20 cents for it.
Maybe we'd feel better using a "Business Card CDR" for little things like that. More convenient too, especially for someone who uses that on a daily basis.
I always use PS/2 ports for mice and keyboards. They are NEVER flakey, always work, and they don't tie up USB ports.
Sure, I could buy yet another hub, but why would I when I have two working PS/2 ports?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The way I see it, floppies were ever only useful if your files are up to 100KB in size. Anything bigger has a good chance of catching a bad sector in the middle of it even if the file is only stored for a few days.
Back when, we did 30-floppy backups using FastBack, which was notorious for failing to restore a backup if even one sector in one of the disks was bad. These backups turned out to have had a half-life of about two hours. And floppy drives have not gotten any more reliable in the past 20 years; they only got cheaper.
Fairly recently, I've seen floppies used for students to pass homework, but lately most teachers are replacing this with e-mail submission.
And the classical irreplaceable use of floppies, to boot the box with an unbootable HD, is no longer relevant, as all more or less modern boxes can boot from CD.
So, between my 5 computers there are 3 floppy drives, and none of them work. The last one broke about 2 years ago, and I've not missed it since.
P.S. In the car-horse analogy, this would be like still having several horses, all of which are dead.
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Here's the thing: Floppies suck.
Don't agree? Too bad, they still suck
From a guy who spent the middle part of the 90's working in a college computer lab, I can't tell you how many kids would come in with a floppy telling me that they couldn't get the only copy of their final paper (or worse, their thesis) off of their floppy disk. I had to tell them "tough tacos", that their data was lost, and they should have backed it up to something. The Zip drives, also floppy magnetic media, were just as bad (if not worse...with the click of death and all). The fact is that floppy disks are a horribly unreliable storage medium...combined with their low transfer rate and incredibly low storage density, they downright suck ass. Some people whine about the longetivity of CD's -- however, due to the frailty of floppy disks, I believe this is a moot argument. (You lose your data if you breathe on floppies wrong!) The people who support floppies because they're "convenient" and it's the only thing they know how to use...I hate to say it, but they sorta deserve to lose their data. Why should we have to suffer (and/or buy crappy technology) because floppies are convenient for some folks?
As far as needing bootable floppies for things like BIOS updates -- floppy advocates may have a point here. I still keep one floppy drive around for this purpose. However, under most circumstances, I'll make a boot floppy on the one system that has a floppy, then burn it to a bootable CD. This way, I won't have to shuffle that drive around. Some will complain that burning a CD is a waste of space and money. I reject that argument because unless you're still using your free AOL floppies from the mid 90's, CDR/RW's are just as cheap as floppies (if not cheaper). Outside of the per-disk cost, on a cost-per-MB basis, it's an absolute no-brainer. Even if you waste 96% of the space on a CD, you're still making off better than you would with a floppy.
Anyway, the end is near for this technology. It's not quite here yet, because manufacturers are still updating bios' with floppies. There are ways around them, but until manufacturers start shipping CD ISO's, these are still hacks. I welcome the demise of floppy technology with open arms. Now, when will analog modems go this way too?
-Turkey
I, for one, really miss the floppy.
I just got a new laptop for racecar support - brand spankin' new HP zd7280us with all the bells and whistles. P4-3.2. Monster 17" widescreen. DVD burner. USB ports up the yinyang. No floppy, no serial port.
The machine it replaces is a Panasonic Toughbook CF-25, a military-spec indestructable deal. P150. No CD burner, no USB - but a floppy drive.
99% of the software moved from one machine to the other was actually installed from scratch, so the lack of connectivity from one to the other wasn't all that big a deal. DATA, on the other hand, is proving to be a pain in the ass. It'd be SO simple to just zip it and dump it to floppy.....
Where I have a real bitch though is the deletion of the serial port from modern laptops. I found a USB-serial converter at RadioShack, but that's the last thing I wanted to do - further complicate my cabling. Grr. Don't the laptop people realize that the most popular way to connect widgets to computers (save printers) is via the serial port?
My phone uses a serial port. The ECU and datalogger on the race car uses the serial port. The scales, pyrometer, shock dyno, and every other measuring equipment I have all use the serial port. And in a pinch, a null-modem cable and ZMODEM makes for a decent file-transfer solution.
Grrr. I want my damn serial port back!
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
That would mean that VCRs don't exist? Hmm, I still have one, and use it often. Until they come up with a portable, reusable, recordable format VCRs will be here. Hell, sounds like they might outlive the DVD player.
VCRs play AND record - DVD players just play.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
apple was the first manufacturer to include a 3.5" floppy drive
on its machines -- in 1984. a 5.25" drive never existed as
an option on the macintosh -- they started their 1.0 machine
with 3.5" floppies (and was also y2k ready in 1984).
apple was also the first manufacturer to NOT include
a 3.5 drive on their machine -- the iMac in 1998.
because they've included being able to boot off a CD* on all
macs since the advent of the powerPC processor migration,
one of the main uses of the floppy on the PC side of things
(i.e. being able to boot a 3.5" floppy to restoring a PC system) --
on the mac, this use for the floppy was eliminated, and
burning CDs has now become the norm.
* you can create a bootable backup system CD on the mac,
just by dragging a system folder onto it before you burn it.
j
The squat dial phone has become an icon, which is why it's used for icons. Seriously. There's no standard cellphone style to make a recognizable cellphone icon. I saw one in a KDE icon collection and thought it was a calculator at first.
It's not just the telephone. Think about the radio. Wouldn't an antique wood Philco radio make a good icon for a radio?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
1) Read/write is transparent. The burning step for CDRW is terrible; you should be able to directly open, save, and erase files just like any other drive. Then you don't need to copy files to your harddrive to work on them and then back again when you're done; that eventually invites confusion. The most prevalent network transfer protocols require separate download/upload steps.
2) The media is physically robust. Unlike CD's, a protective case isn't critical for floppies. Floppies do not start flaking out after being scratched a number of times. They're easier to transport and share -- I can put them in a backpack and run around all day without the flimsy plastic case breaking. And the fact you can write on them with a normal pen increases usefulness too: labelling is really helpful for yourself and essential for sharing.
And unlike USB drives, floppies have a standardized size, so you can stack them and store them in standardized cases.
3) The media is cheap, which facilitates sharing. USB drives cost lots of money; to give your data to someone you can't just hand them a spare drive. Floppies, even the older high quality ones, are cheap enough to give away.
With cheap media, you can afford to use a labelled disk as a unit of classification -- you don't need to fill up the disk to get your money's worth. USB drives can't do this (yet).
Expensive drives inside computers paired with cheap disks is much better than expensive combined disk+drives that can be swapped between computers. A good universal physical medium should be usable on all computers; it's not like the act of transferring files is something that only the rare person with a usb stick wants to do. You should only have to have a cheap disk to transfer files; you should not have to invest in a special drive.
To transfer files I once had to go around knocking on doors, looking for someone with a USB drive. This is ridiculous. (I am more likely to have a spare floppy, or only have to go knocking around for a floppy!)
4) Media reading/writing is (was) universal. CD drives are universal, but not always for writing. USB is pretty good now, but it can be a pain to find the plug in the back of the machine; I've also had weird OS hangups on certain systems (esp. older windows). Networks aren't always available in all environments -- especially figuring out which server or transfer protocol to use that will work for your particular situation.
Universality was definitely a bane of Zip drives and other floppy replacements -- a media type is useful only if everyone else has it.
5) They're dead easy to use. The CD burn step and usb issues were mentioned above. Further, network transfers are a pain. I've had the most annoying experiences just figuring out how to network transfer a file from one computer to another. Maybe you can upload/download via ftp -- if you have a server around, and you even know what ftp is? Maybe use email -- which requires extra space in someone's mailbox, and through web interfaces is often even clunkier than ftp? And the login steps are definitely extraneous. Store on a network drive -- if you have a server available nearby? Computers still can't universally detect each other's presence and sling around individual files without depending on some remote server. The easiest and most common way to transfer files I've observed on campus is to have an AOL IM signon on each computer, then use its file transfer mechanism. This is ridiculous. If files still fit on floppies this situation would be so much easier.
Obviously, it's possible to solve the peer-to-peer transfer problem via better and more universal pr
-Brendan
Hopefully they will just come up with a replacement for saving a file. The idea of "saving a file" is really a throwback to when software was a lot more primitive. It already in practice has evolved into a basic version control system.
There are obvious benefits in using a real version control system instead. Once "Save" is replaced by "Check In", the system can journal every character the user types to disk and a lot less work will be lost. I've yet to encounter a version control system that's actually simple enough for my mother to use, but once one appears the "Save" button could disappear virtually overnight.
The other thing "Save" is used for is file transfer (via email, or floppy, or network share). I'm not sure where this will go. MS Office already has "Send to..." right there in the File menu, but there's a bunch of niggling problems with it:
fish and pipes