Are Floppy Drives Obsolete?

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: grrl
I still have one on my home machine, but I hardly ever use it now that I have a USB pen drive. Still, my wife still needs a floppy drive on occasion, and as others have mentioned, it can still be used for mission critical things.

That reminded me of one other problem with a pen drive - I've only got one. Floppy disks are everywhere. So in the time it takes me to tear up the place looking for the thumbdrive, I can either use a floppy disk or a CD-RW.

I'm surprised noone's mentioned SUPERDISK yet! The LS-120 drive could use its own 120MB floppy-sized cartridges, but it could also read/write plain old 1.44MB disks.

Yeah, that would have been nice to have around. If they could have come to market a bit sooner, they could have likely beaten out the ZIP drives, which were already just about everywhere.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
On things like servers and workstations and power-user PCs, the floppy is FAR from dead.

Yep. A Win98se boot disk, a Ghost 2003 boot disk, and a copy of Norton Diskedit 2002 on a floppy, are all essential tools of mine. Floppies are far from dead, especially for diagnostics and troubleshooting.

If anyone remembers back that far, large room-size minicomputers had an "operator terminal" for control and diagnostics, and a ... you guessed it, a floppy drive!

Granted, if it were possible to replace its entire functionality with some other form of non-volatile, portable, convenient storage, I'd do it in a hearbeat. But there isn't yet, at least not quite.

USB flash is great, but until mobo BIOSes/chipsets can emulate (in hardware) a floppy-controller interface, such that legacy OSes will see a bootable USB flash as a floppy controller and disk, then the floppy is here to stay. (My KT400-based mobo, can emulate, in hardware AFAIK, PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports, using a USB keyboard/mouse. That goes above and beyond the normal BIOS-level device emulation, and is what is needed for entire legacy OSes.)

I've investigated the bootable issue for USB flash drives too, and it appears to be down to whether or not the internal controller on the device supports it, for some reason. It's not just a matter of laying down the proper boot-sector on the device. I also hope that they will start to make "write-protect" switches standard on USB flash drives too, because it is useless from a security perspective to use a non-write-protected medium for diagnostic purposes.

Edit: Just had an idea - what about a multi-format flash memory access device, that would fit into a 3.5in drive bay, but yet plug into the mobo's floppy-drive connector? Basically, the OS would see it as a floppy, but the "intelligent" flash reader would emulate the floppy interface, and allow use of multiple types of flash memory. It could also have a "normal" USB interface back to the mobo too, such that when a more modern OS had booted, it could access the flash reader normally, instead of through the slow emulated floppy interface.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

i've used mine for bios falshes and running memtest 86. don't have one in my dell laptop and never wanted one.

they are not obsolete if you screw around with your computer as much as ATers, but for mainstream, obsolete

 

[SonicIce]

Are we talking about 3.5" or 5.25" floppy drives?

 

[bluemax]

One of the coolest devices out there is a combo drive. One 3.5" drive bay, but gives you classic floppy but also a media multi-card reader. Old and new!

 

[stevty2889]

I've used my floppy drive once in the last 2 years to install my SATA drivers. Then I slipstreamed the drivers into an XP CD, and haven't had to use it since.

 

[caz67]

I only use my floppy to install SATA Raid drivers..

 

[raildogg]

Hey my current pc has no floppy drive ... so i guess for me they are obselete

 

[LanFear]

Originally posted by: cy7878

Originally posted by: loki8481

Originally posted by: Feep
why? just wait until office max has those free cd r deals.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to get over the trauma of having to spend $2/CD back in the mid-90's

plus, when dealing with a server that doesn't have a floppy or cd drive, it's a lot easier to hook up a usb floppy than a usb cd drive.

WHat about the days when 3.5 HD floppies cost $60 a box? Bought my first box from now OOB Egghead software back in 1988. I remember when the drive was $200 option.

Wow, Egghead software, i haven't heard that in ages. I used to by a ton of stuff from them, they were great in their time. Always wondered if Newegg was a spinoff of them.

 

[LanFear]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
I've used my floppy drive once in the last 2 years to install my SATA drivers. Then I slipstreamed the drivers into an XP CD, and haven't had to use it since.

Hopefully when XP Pro 64-bit arives, they'll have native SATA support. I still use my floppy, mostly for data recovery tools and bios updates.

 

[OS]

every couple years or so people say the floppy's time has come but it's almost 2005 now and they're still everywhere.

 

[JohnPaul]

I have one in my rig, but have not used it in quite some time. I don't even use it for bios flashes anymore, since I just use the program that came with my last two motherboards, which updates the bios over the net. BTW, one was a Gigabyte, the other an ASUS. Some people are afraid of internet bios updates, but I have done it many times without so much as a hiccup.

 

[klah]

Originally posted by: LanFear

Originally posted by: cy7878

Originally posted by: loki8481

Originally posted by: Feep
why? just wait until office max has those free cd r deals.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to get over the trauma of having to spend $2/CD back in the mid-90's

plus, when dealing with a server that doesn't have a floppy or cd drive, it's a lot easier to hook up a usb floppy than a usb cd drive.

WHat about the days when 3.5 HD floppies cost $60 a box? Bought my first box from now OOB Egghead software back in 1988. I remember when the drive was $200 option.

Wow, Egghead software, i haven't heard that in ages. I used to by a ton of stuff from them, they were great in their time. Always wondered if Newegg was a spinoff of them.

Egghead rocked in the 80's! Too bad they went bankrupt a few years back. I think they were owned by Fry's for a while but now they are owned by Amazon.

 

[imported_ewright]

Well let's see. They only hold a minute speck of data and if you look at them wrong they don't work anymore. They're less reliable, less stable, and have a much tinier capacity than any other comparable media type (CD, DVD, ZIP, LS-120, etc.). You can beat 'em with a keychain at this point.

I don't have one and I probably never will again. Its a useless drain on my PSU. So yes, IMO they're obsolete.

However, if you still need them for BIOS flashes, installing RAID drivers prior to Windows, etc., then they aren't obsolete to you personally, I guess.

 

[mnm1200]

I still use 5 1/4" floppys in my XP boxes and I use them to transfer data between an IBM PS/1 and my other machines. For me, 3 1/2s are not obsolete. Heck, 5 1/4s are just getting into their prime