No more floppy ones

skyd0g

Sony is stopping production of the 3.5" floppy disc after 30 years.

I suppose it was going to happen sometime, but it takes me back to the days when they first appeared as cutting-edge technology and a miracle when compared to the tape-loaders on some of the early home computers.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/622726/sony-kills-off-the-floppy-disk

Smokin Joe

I still like them, and I have been thinking about getting an external floppy drive. They have enough capacity to store the sort of financial data a self-employed sole trader like myself has, they are reliable and work fuss-free on any pc.

CD's and DVD's may have many times the capacity, but but despite all the claims reliable they are not and info put on the disks on one machine can be a real pain to read on another.

guinea

Are you serious?

Just get a USB fob. 1000s of times the space, far more reliable and cheaper. Or you can even use email to share and store your docs.

Your compatibility point doesn't work, yes home burned CDs are pants, but who has a floppy these days?

MrChuck

According to this Sony still sold 12 million of them in Japan last year:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/sony-announces-the-death-of-the-floppy-disk/

Headhuunter

God I remember 7 and a quarter inch floppies when I was at school in the early 80s....

freehub

I've not used one for years. The only every reason I've used them is for flashing my graphics card and motherboard, can be done by USB now though or from HDD.

bompington

In my hazy recollection, floppies are about equally reliable to CDs - which is to say that I have had several cases of both going off.
Flash drives aren't 100% reliable either, I've never had one fail on me but I've had 3 cases in the last couple of years where someone has come to me in a panic cos theirs is bust - none would admit to putting it through the wash.

I find a phone to be a useful backup tool, most phones can easily be synced with a PC so you have 2 copies of all your data (up to your phone's capacity, of course) and if you then keep a USB drive with a 3rd copy somewhere separate, that's a fairly foolproof backup strategy for anything up to big photo/film collections - if you want more bomproof than that, pay for one of the serious web based services.
Of course keeping everything on your phone has the advantage that you've always got your stuff with you, with my handlebar mount I can browse the family album or edit a couple of spreadsheets while out cycling, how useful is that?

hopper1

bompington wrote:

In my hazy recollection, floppies are about equally reliable to CDs - which is to say that I have had several cases of both going off.
Flash drives aren't 100% reliable either, I've never had one fail on me but I've had 3 cases in the last couple of years where someone has come to me in a panic cos theirs is bust - none would admit to putting it through the wash.

I find a phone to be a useful backup tool, most phones can easily be synced with a PC so you have 2 copies of all your data (up to your phone's capacity, of course) and if you then keep a USB drive with a 3rd copy somewhere separate, that's a fairly foolproof backup strategy for anything up to big photo/film collections - if you want more bomproof than that, pay for one of the serious web based services.
Of course keeping everything on your phone has the advantage that you've always got your stuff with you, with my handlebar mount I can browse the family album or edit a couple of spreadsheets while out cycling, how useful is that?

I've washed three USB sticks, the only problem I had, with one of them was that it was a tighter fit when trying to plug into PC!

Are they prone to shrinking!?

freehub

bompington wrote:

In my hazy recollection, floppies are about equally reliable to CDs - which is to say that I have had several cases of both going off.
Flash drives aren't 100% reliable either, I've never had one fail on me but I've had 3 cases in the last couple of years where someone has come to me in a panic cos theirs is bust - none would admit to putting it through the wash.

I find a phone to be a useful backup tool, most phones can easily be synced with a PC so you have 2 copies of all your data (up to your phone's capacity, of course) and if you then keep a USB drive with a 3rd copy somewhere separate, that's a fairly foolproof backup strategy for anything up to big photo/film collections - if you want more bomproof than that, pay for one of the serious web based services.
Of course keeping everything on your phone has the advantage that you've always got your stuff with you, with my handlebar mount I can browse the family album or edit a couple of spreadsheets while out cycling, how useful is that?

They can get damaged by just pulling them out without safely removing them, I do that

My USB stick weighs about 4kg now though and is about 18" across.

greasedscotsman

bompington wrote:

Of course keeping everything on your phone has the advantage that you've always got your stuff with you, with my handlebar mount I can browse the family album or edit a couple of spreadsheets while out cycling, how useful is that?

Your editing spreadsheets whilst biking? Blimey...

oldwelshman

Headhuunter wrote:

God I remember 7 and a quarter inch floppies when I was at school in the early 80s....

+1 I remember using these to install operating software on hospital CT scanners.
Can even rememebr the large 18" tape catridges also used for system software !!
Last used floppy on extrenal drive for service tools but even they are now on USB stick and very few pc's now have floppy's.
For backups I often clone drives using acronis as most disks are available for £30 or a bit more so not worth the hassle, just copy the whole disk!!
Use USB for document bacups though.

Headhuunter

oldwelshman wrote:

Headhuunter wrote:

God I remember 7 and a quarter inch floppies when I was at school in the early 80s....

+1 I remember using these to install operating software on hospital CT scanners.
Can even rememebr the large 18" tape catridges also used for system software !!
Last used floppy on extrenal drive for service tools but even they are now on USB stick and very few pc's now have floppy's.
For backups I often clone drives using acronis as most disks are available for £30 or a bit more so not worth the hassle, just copy the whole disk!!
Use USB for document bacups though.

I don't remember tape drives but I remember loading up games onto my friends ZX Spectrum when I was about 9 or 10 years old from standard cassette. We used to set the cassette and computer up and go away for 5 mins, get a glass of fruit juice etc, go back 5 mins later and the game would have finished loading!

Then I remember my school taking delivery of its 1st computer in 1982 or 83, a BBC Model B with 7 and a quarter inch disc drive and what a revelation! Suddenly we could load up stuff in a couple of seconds! My dad was a teacher and rather than leave his school's BBC computers in teh school during the long holdiays, the staff used to take them home. He used to bring back a BBC with disc dribve for us to play all summer - happy days playing space invaders, Pacman and Donkey Kong when we should have been outside playing in the sun!

Stewie Griffin

Reminds me, I must re connect my floppy as I didnt bother when I built my PC, I didnt have a blanking thingy so I just put the drive back in to fill the hole. I have an Amiga emulator which I have managed to get up and "running" and all I have to do is connect the drive and set up up as 720k and I can play all my old Amiga stuff, hopefully 8)

pst88

Headhuunter wrote:

God I remember 7 and a quarter inch floppies when I was at school in the early 80s....

You sure they weren't 5 and a quarter? That's what I remember on the BBC Micro. There were 8 inch floppies but they were older. I'm sure I remember the requirement to flip a floppy disk over at some point because they were double sided but only one side could be read at a time but I could be wrong. Also copying a floppy disk with one drive required inserting the first disk to read one track, insert the second disk to write, insert the first disk again and repeat. Took ages of swapping the disks over to copy. Those were the days.

Wheelspinner

I can recall the first Compaq "portable" computers which were the size of a small suitcase, and weighed as much as a bag of cement... IIRC, they were one of the first to be produced with an astonishing 20 MB of hard disk drive as well as twin 3.5" diskette drives. The idea was to store the OS on the hdd and your apps and data files on the diskettes I think.

Memorable advertising slogan: "Floppy when you should be hard???" I am not making that up!!!

nmcgann

Smokin Joe wrote:

I still like them, and I have been thinking about getting an external floppy drive. They have enough capacity to store the sort of financial data a self-employed sole trader like myself has, they are reliable and work fuss-free on any pc.

CD's and DVD's may have many times the capacity, but but despite all the claims reliable they are not and info put on the disks on one machine can be a real pain to read on another.

Floppy disks are very unreliable for long term storage. Not as bad as magnetic tape, but you need 3 copies to stand a decent chance of getting a readable backup after 2-3 years.

I can't remember the last time I had inter-PC CD-R problems, they have been pretty universally compatible for some years now. I'd agree DVD-Rs are still finickly, at work we get certain combinations of DVD-R blanks and PCs that make disks that other PCs won't read.

USB flash drives are the way ahead. Cheap, small, high capacity and very reliable.