Farewell To the Floppy Disk

s31523 writes "Those of us who have been in the IT arena for a while remember installing our favorite OS, network client, power application, etc. by feeding the computer what seemed an endless supply of 5.25" soft floppy disks. We rejoiced when the hard 3.5" floppies came out, cutting our install media by 1/3. We practically did backflips when the data CD-ROM arrived and we declared: we will never need any other disk than this! It is with sadness that I report the beginning of the end for the floppy: computer giant PC World has announced it will no longer carry the floppy disk once current supplies run out."

Windows installer requires them

[ArcherB (796902)]

I wonder if this means that MS will stop requiring floppies to install a 3rd party RAID controller during the installation.

(I bring this up because I had to install a floppy on a computer I was reinstalling XP on the other day so I could use the SATA drive! I kinda felt dirty after doing that!)

Re:Windows installer requires them

[DarkShadeChaos (954173)]

I second that, as well as being the easiest method of updating the BIOS (which happens more often than not on my DFI Lanparty nf4 sli-dr expert).

Re:Windows installer requires them

[Midnight Thunder (17205)]

I second that, as well as being the easiest method of updating the BIOS (which happens more often than not on my DFI Lanparty nf4 sli-dr expert).

Given the abundance of USB-Flash keys, I would hope that most modern PCs can be booted off USB devices.

Re:Windows installer requires them

[rickb928 (945187)]

Yes, you can, and yes, I can tell you how. I did it to 20+ Compaq servers for a project. if XP only wants a foppy for the drivers, I expect this trick will work for that, too. After all, it's just a floppy as far as Windows knows.

Hint: format the USB key as a 1.2MB floppy. If you ask nice, I'll tell you how. If you ask naughty, go Google it yersef. I did. Took me most of an hour to figure it out, and most of a day to get it approved. Slick.

Of course, WIN Server 2K/2K3 and the F6 floppy idea still rots, but it's NOT impossible.

-rick

Re:Windows installer requires them

[rtb61 (674572)]

How to annoy people. Tell a person with one computer all about slipstreaming ;0.

Re:So, XP and below are doomed by this.

[cpt kangarooski (3773)]

USB floppies are trickier than you think. The main problem is that the data interface for a floppy is only accessible when you open the shutter, but when you plug in a usb cable and spin up the floppy, the cable tends to either damage the media or get pulled into the disk, causing it to jam.

Re:Windows installer requires them

[ditoa (952847)]

I wish Microsoft would release an application which automates integration of SATA/SCSI drivers so a floppy isn't needed during install. This can be done manually (although it is annoying complex) or with Nlite however an official tool would be great. I am surprised their deployment tools does not include an Nlite type application in all honesty.

Re:Windows installer requires them

[Nik13 (837926)]

For Win XP yes, that is, until they make a new installer for it, based on Vista's (been hearing about this lately), which they will do mainly to support the new deployment techniques replacing RIS. Vista doesn't need a floppy for drivers (the installer uses WinPE, and can load drivers from just about anything, including USB memory sticks). Meanwhile, you can integrate driver packs [driverpacks.net] (including mass storage adapters) or just your own drivers on your XP install disc, and you won't have to provide a floppy anymore. It's not as hard as it may sound, and it only takes a few minutes to do. Go to MSFN [msfn.org] if you need information on things like this, and lots more (unattended installs too, which save a lot of time)

Personally, I haven't had a floppy in any of my PCs for at least 5 years. For the odd time I needed a win98 boot floppy or such, then I have floppy images on several bootable DVDs (there's lots of them out there if you're too lazy to do it yourself or don't know how).

However, I still have an old floppy drive (and a trusty LS120) somewhere on a shelf, for the odd time it might come in handy (rescue data, reflash a BIOS from dos - although I prefer to do that from a hard disk as floppies are unreliable, and things like that).

Re:Windows installer requires them

[Reaperducer (871695)]

Does this mean that the Dell-heads will stop telling me that "No floppy drive" is a valid a reason not to switch to a Mac?

Re:Windows installer requires them

[zakezuke (229119)]

Yes, Vista does not require install from Floppy. It will support CD/DVD and USB now.

Ok, so do I invest in 2.5 gigs of memory, or do I use an unused teac and floppy.

Mod storage medium down

[Rob T Firefly (844560)]

(-1, Redundant)

Re:Mod storage medium down

[Intron (870560)]

ITYM

(-1, Insertful)

Hey I still have punch cards!

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

I did approx half of my CS degree with punch cards. Luckily in those days code density seemed to be higher. I did a compiler on less than 2000 cards. Perhaps the media forced people to be frugal. Tripping and dropping a box of 2000 cards, then having to put them all back in order is an ordeal that the modern CS student does not have to face. At least you could spot the geeks... they carried a punch card box and a slide rule.

I well remember moving to 8 inch, then 5.25 inch floppies. My wife made me a few shirts with extra big pockets which could take a couple of 5.25s.

Even with all these fond memories, I prefer CD.

Re:Hey I still have punch cards!

[that this is not und (1026860)]

When my father first started programming for IBM there was a tiny 'drum' memory that was temporary, a tiny amount of 'random access r/w memory,' a high speed card reader, and a high speed card punch. I think the whole CPU was vacuum tube at that time.

Writing and running a program consisted of:

1. Typing out your source code, one line of code per card.
2. Getting the 'compiler/assembler' program card deck out of storage.
3. Reading the 'compiler/assembler' deck into the computer and starting it running.
4. Loading your source code deck as data cards.
5. The compiler/assembler would churn away and then punch out your object card deck.
6. Move the object card deck from the card punch 'out' bin to the card reader 'in' bin.
7. Load your 'object' card deck into the computer and start it running.

For each pass, and each change to your program, the computer would have to punch out a new 'object' deck. There was no other intermediate storage available.

I'm pretty sure I am remembering this right. Dad was a programmer a long, long time ago, and I only know this process from him telling it to me.

Sadly... Good!

[HomelessInLaJolla (1026842)]

> computer giant PC World has announced it will no longer carry the floppy disk once current supplies run out.

Since '95 the quality control on floppy disks has been so low that it hasn't been worth buying them anyway. At one time a SS/DD 5.25" could be used as a DS/DD reliably for five years or more without errors "just appearing". Maybe a patent ran out or QA began paying more attention to HD and CD manufacturing. Whatever it was, though, after '95 the floppy disks which I've bought have an average lifespan of about three months before random errors begin appearing on the media.

Re:Sadly... Good!

[i_should_be_working (720372)]

There's a silver lining: the poor reliability of floppies is what taught me my good backup habits.

The !silver lining is that because of their poor reliability and the stress it's caused me, whenever I see floppies (or tapes) I throw them to the ground and stomp them to bits. Even if they're not mine.

Floppy disk reliability

[sshore (50665)]

Whatever it was, though, after '95 the floppy disks which I've bought have an average lifespan of about three months before random errors begin appearing on the media.

Floppy drives are rarely used and have outside air continuously drawn through them while the computer is on, collecting a significant amount of dust. When they're called into service again, the vibration of operation drops the dust and debris into the disk, and the full-contact readwrite head ensures that the dust is ground in nicely.

Back in the days when floppy drives were used daily, there wasn't opportunity for this amount of dust to build up.

One strategy to improve floppy disk reliability these days is to pop in a "sacrificial disk" and do a few operations on it before putting in the actual disk you want to read/write. Another alternative is to use a positive pressure case with an air filter on the intake.

Re:Sadly... Good!

[natrius (642724)]

That's not a bug, it's a feature to make sure you don't copy that floppy. [google.com]

BIOS Upgrades...

[xTK-421x (531992)]

For those who still upgrade their BIOS via floppy (which seems to be the last major use), here's how to format your USB key to be bootable: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveropti ons/us/download/23839.html [hp.com]

Old Archives

[adambha (1048538)]

I recently found an old 3.5" floppy with some useless, but nostalgic data on it. So, I dug through my box of spare 'parts' and found an old drive. As I went to install the drive in my desktop machine to pull the data off the floppy I realized an important fact: that box has no floppy controller.

In that sense, the floppy has already been gone for some of us for awhile now.

How is this new news?

[WndrBr3d (219963)]

Dell has stopped installing floppy drives in desktops by default now for the better part of two years now.

I think what should be news is that although everyone is retiring the floppy drive and sending all the disks to the bone yard, nobody has come up with an alternative way to flash device BIOS's. Companies for RAID, Network and other devices sometimes still only release a floppy self-writing image file.

Not for me

[willith (218835)]

When I can upgrade the BIOS and firmware on every device I have to support at work from inside of Windows, *then* I'll bid goodbye to the floppy. With the wild mix of hardware most IT shops have to deal with, I wouldn't count on it any time soon. In the PC world, we're shackled to the floppy disk because of the low level at which it's integrated into the system, and as crappy as it is, some tasks still require it.

Yes, you can do that with the nifty-keen gaming motherboard on your gaming computer, but my army of Dell Optiplex GX150s and 260s still need me to use floppies (USB sticks aren't allowed in the building for ludicrously retarded "security" reasons).

1998

[Myopic (18616)]

In 1998 when Apple released the original bondi blue iMac without a floppy drive, the floppy disc was ALREADY so absurdly useless that no computer user needed them. So, I proffer that this story is late by about a decade.

Floppies won't be missed

[TheMidnight (1055796)]

Anyone else ever try to download big files from your school's higher speed Internet connection and then use WinZip or PKZIP to try and zip it up over 40 floppies, only to find when you got home, disk #40 had a bad sector in the readme.txt file and the entire archive was bad?

With as many Word documents I had to rescue for friends from those things with ScanDisk, and as many went bad after 6 months or less, I say good riddance to bad rubbish. Of course, the quality went to hell around the era of Windows 95. Before that, companies actually made good floppies that would last on the order of years.

Good bye and good riddance

[pyite69 (463042)]

I have wasted so much time with bad sectors, it is too depressing.

With el Torito and CD-RW's, it is easy to get by without a floppy drive.

Save Icon?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Should we now have to replace the "Save" icons on all out apps?
Or shall we keep it around as a memorial (and to confuse the next generation)?

Nah

[nurb432 (527695)]

Its not dead yet. Just in serious peril.. We will still be using floppies in 10 years.

What about 8" floppies!!!

[mspohr (589790)]

I still have a stash of 8" floppies. (At 256KB data capacity, the bit domains are so big you can actually see the data with suitable preparation.)

What's the difference btwn a woman and a computer?

[jez9999 (618189)]

A woman won't accept a 3.5" floppy.

Beginning of the end????

[gstoddart (321705)]

It is with sadness that I report the beginning of the end for the floppy

I think we're at the middle of the end at a bare minimum.

I bet for a lot of us, we've not handled floppies in several years. And, while my computers still have floppy drives, nothing has been in them for quite a while.

It's way too late in the decline of the floppy to call it "the beginning of the end".

Cheers

Plenty of supply

[smellsofbikes (890263)]

That's okay: any geek worth anything has boxes and boxes of them, unlabelled, to shore up the dwindling reserves. I think I have two cubic feet just of Amiga software from 1985 on 3.5" discs, and I don't even know how much from Win95 backups.

I've never called the 3 1/2 ones floppies

[thewils (463314)]

That was reserved for the truly floppy 5 1/4 disks (or even the eight inch ones I used on Datapoint machines).

I prefer to call the 3 1/2 ones "stiffies".

Old-school

[Ancil (622971)]

Those of us who have been in the IT arena for a while remember installing our favorite OS, network client, power application, etc. by feeding the computer what seemed an endless supply of 5.25" soft floppy disks.

Those of us who've been in IT for a long while remember when the OS and power application lived on a floppy, because the computer didn't have a hard disk.

It's

[wsanders (114993)]

[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]

about

[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]

time.

[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]

Anybody

[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]

remem

[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]

ber the

[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]

128K

[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]

Mac?

Floppies from Hell

[onkelonkel (560274)]

Installing Office 95 on a Toshiba laptop. Twenty six (twenty fucking six!) floppies. After it loaded each one the installer would unpack files for about 3 minutes and only then would it ask for the next floppy. It seemed like about 3 hours to install. I also remember screwing up somehow (do you confirm not wanting to continue to cancel? Y/N/Abort) at some point and having to do this twice. Curse you floppy drive!

Who cares what PC World says?

[gklinger (571901)]

Those of us who enjoy using older computers (in my case, Commodore 8bit computers) have been dealing with this problem for quite some time. It has been at least seven years since I saw 5.25" floppy disks for sale in a mainstream store. Luckily, there's a company still making 3.5", 5.25" and even 8" (seriously) floppy disks and they sell directly to the public through their website. They're called ATHANA International [athana.com] located in Harbor City, CA and their prices are reasonable. 5.25" DS/DD, 48TPI, soft sectored (unformatted) disks are $7.95 per box of 10 if you buy 2-5 boxes and the price drops to as little as $0.52 per disk if you purchase 500 or more.

I hope someone finds this information useful.

When do we get notchable CD's?

[CrazyJim1 (809850)]

I want to use both sides of my CD to store data.

Vista still requires them to back up credentials

[Myria (562655)]

Even in Windows Vista, you still need a floppy disk to back up your logon credentials so that you can recover encrypted files if the OS fails. There is still no way to back this up to a disk file so that you can burn it to CD-R then delete it.

Melissa

USB flash is everywhere!

[linebackn (131821)]

I really like USB flash drives these days, and this is coming from someone, who back in the day, wrote a floppy disk formatting program to get more than 1.4 megs out of 3.5" disks.

To me the best thing about flash drives is that they work almost EVERYWHERE now. There are drivers out there for Windows 95 ("B" version and up), Windows NT, and even DOS! Ok, here's a link [toastytech.com]. They will work on my Mac, Linux and even the eComstation (that's OS/2) demo CD I tried!

I used to think Iomega would rule the world with their Zip drives, but the prices of the disks always remained insanely high and the disks and drives were not as reliable as they should have been. Also, I don't think I ever saw anybody other than Iomega produce zip-compatible drives. Probably patents and BS.

The dawn of time called...

[by Anonymous Coward]

It wants that joke back.

Not too late.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

Luckily there are still USB floppy drives available [tigerdirect.com], so even if your mobo lacks a "real" FD controller, you can still read the disks.

I wouldn't waste too much time before you archive them, though; drives are only going to get harder to find, and the media itself that you have stuff stored on ain't getting any younger.

A slight bit of irony, though: years ago, when I first got an Iomega Zip disk, I was sure that it was going to replace floppies completely. (And for a while it seemed like it; there were some Macs in the late 90s that shipped with Zips in place of the FD drive.) So I dutifully backed up all my old floppies onto Zip disks. Not that long ago, when I decided it was time to retire the Zip for good, I went to pull the data off of its cartridges and back them up on CD-R...only to find that the disks were plagued with the "clicks." I had to go back to the floppies to get the old stuff again.

Taught me two good lessons: 1) always roll backups onto new media whenever possible (I should have backed those Zips up to CD-R as soon as I got a disc burner), but more importantly 2) don't ever trust that the new media will be more robust than the old. Even now, I still have the floppies stored along with the CDs (and now DVD+Rs), because I'm not sure which will last longer. Might as well cover all the bases.

Another publicity stunt from the Dixons group

[Dogtanian (588974)]

For those not familiar with the parent company of PC World, the former Dixons group [wikipedia.org], this is the third time that they've pulled this stunt. That is, with great ceremony, announcing that they are to stop selling a technology that is (supposedly) becoming long-in-the-tooth and obsolete, and getting lots of attention from the press, who use it as an excuse to describe the (supposed) passing of a particular technology:-

(1) Death of video recorder (i.e. VCR) in sight [bbc.co.uk]

(2) Dixons to end 35mm camera sales [bbc.co.uk].

In the case of the VCR, their announcement was misleading at best, and more likely just a pack of lies. Dixons.co.uk (and the large-format Currys stores) *still* each sell a wide range of standalone VCRs, over 2 years later. (Visit dixons.co.uk [dixons.co.uk] and search for "video recorder").

IIRC the high-street Dixons stores (now called "Currys.Digital", ugh) still sold them long after the supposed phase-out date. I don't know about the 35mm cameras, but even if they were telling the truth in that case, it was a nice publicity stunt for them. Even more so for the floppy discs; you're stopping selling floppy discs and you felt the need to make a big announcement about it?!

Of course, the intention behind these announcements- besides the straight publicity- is to give the impression of Dixons and PC World as hi-tech, cutting-edge type places. When in fact they're mediocre at best; sometimes competitive, but just as often overpriced- particularly for more humble items such as USB and Ethernet cables, staffed by salespeople who like to pretend they know more than they do, flogging overpriced warranties and with a poor reputation [ciao.co.uk]. Online shopping is much cheaper, and with a better selection.

They got a mention on /. too...

[Dogtanian (588974)]

Hang on a minute; after some searching, it looks like even our favourite website picked up those stories (via the BBC):-

(1) "The UK's largest retailer of electronics is phasing out VHS VCRs." [slashdot.org] (Note that as I pointed out then [slashdot.org], Dixons' "discontinuation" of the VCR took place before DVD recorders (*not* playback-only devices) and HDD-based PVRs had taken off.

(2) "Digital Cameras Force Film Off Dixons' Shelves" [slashdot.org]

I got an email about this

[spun (1352)]

Just the other day, I got an email purporting to have found the cure for floppy di... oh wait, diSks, floppy disks. Nevermind.

No replacement, but most don't care.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

I think you have a good point -- there really isn't anything that's the exact match for a floppy, in terms of cheap, ubiquitous storage -- but I think the demand for it has decreased to the point where people will only miss it occasionally.

I used to keep stacks of floppies sitting around, mostly ones conveniently sent to my home by the kind folks at America Online, to give to people when they needed some document or other. I rarely got them back, and it was understood that discs just sort of circulated around, like some sort of valueless currency. When you needed one, you just looked around until you found one (that looked disused) and did whatever you had to do.

Email has really replaced floppies. Not just email as a service, because obviously email has been around for decades, and floppies didn't decline in popularity until the last few years, but near-universal access to email, with the capability of receiving nontrivial attachments (greater than a few K but less than a few MB), and always-on connectivity. Before you had that, giving someone a floppy with a document was the most convenient method. Now, email is by far easier. If I was working on something, and needed to give someone a copy, using removable storage wouldn't be my first thought: instead I'd just send it to them.

The kind of removable storage you're talking about is only necessary for a few cases, either where the file is too big to be practically attached to an email, or the person doesn't have an email address (rare, these days) or other internet access to receive it. So in those cases, CD-R or CD-RW are made to suffice.

Overall, mini CDs or business-card CD-Rs would be a good candidate for replacement (and it's really not hard to put them in a little vinyl sleeve to keep them from getting scratched; 5.25" floppies didn't last long outside a paper sleeve either), but the market for them is just so limited that the economies of scale don't exist to make them as cheap as floppies were.

Re:Still no working replacement

[theLOUDroom (556455)]

I don't see why modern technology can not come up with a pocketable 99 cent storage medium with capacity of around 128MB, but so far there is nothing else with a feature set of a floppy.

From a technical standpoint, Minidisc is exactly that.
Unfortunately, Sony has pretty successfully killed their own format.

They're too afraid of piracy, to actually sell decent products. Instead they always offer too little, too late.

Re:Still no working replacement

[Dogtanian (588974)]

floppies were never reliable

I found them pretty reliable if you looked after them; the 5.25" discs on my Atari were almost 100% reliable. Had some minor problems with a few floppies on my Amiga, but that was probably because the drive was too close to the TV (or I was using old, worn discs).

My neighbor put his resume on 3 floppies and went to Kinko's to print it on nice paper. All 3 were bad.

Floppies in the past 5 (well, probably closer to 10) years have suffered in reliability because they were ruthlessly commoditised, prices cut to the bone and beyond. No-one wanted to pay much for a technology which- by that time- was relatively ancient, very low in capacity and totally lacking in glamour. Falling manufacturing costs can only go so far if you have to retain design compatibility- particularly with a mechanical device- no matter how obsolete the tech, and I'd guess that there's still a price limit below which you can't produce a reliable drive.

I liked floppy discs, but the reason that the 3.5" 1.44MB floppy survived so long was that no-one came up with a truly universal successor (the Zip disc had some success in its day, but never became "standard"). Guaranteed bootability, universal support, etc... made it a near-essential even in the face of more advanced technologies that would otherwise have killed it far earlier; but you can see why no-one wanted to pay much for one.

I would say that its day was over, but people were saying that 2 years back. Truth is, despite PC World's attention-whoring announcment, the floppy won't die suddenly, it'll just continue fading away.

LS-120 and 250

[Mal-2 (675116)]

The LS-120 drive (and its successor, the 250) had the potential to supplant floppy drives, though they sadly did not. First, they could read and write ordinary 1.44 MB disks (though formatting them was always a bit dicey) in addition to their own media, and if you had a dedicated "floppy slot" in your case, you could easily adapt the drive, sans faceplate, to masquerade as the floppy drive it was replacing. If you didn't tell anyone it wasn't just a floppy drive, then the seek noise and powered eject were about the only signs something was unusual. I think I bought a 10-pack of LS-120 disks when I bought the drive and never bought any again, but it was very nice for making backups on the fly, considering I only had a 1.2 GB hard drive. The only drawback was that it was ATAPI and did not use the floppy controller, meaning after a CD-ROM I was down to two spots for hard drives. Somewhat ironically, this is now a major advantage as floppy controllers are often lacking and ATA-to-USB converters are plentiful. I still have my old LS-120 in a drawer, and it was working when I put it there. If I desperately had to read an old floppy disk, I'd probably toss the LS-120 into an external USB case and try that before tearing a machine open. I wouldn't trust the two Zip drives in the same drawer to be anything but paperweights.

The 250 drives went even further, by allowing you to format regular floppies to some ungodly (and ultimately unreliable) capacity in the range of 30 MB. This typically left them readable only by the original drive, even other LS-250s tended not to be able to read them. Also, they had just a wee problem with bit rot. But they could still use 1.44 MB disks in the conventional manner as well, and the older 120 MB disks, and their own 250 MB disks. They were just too little too late -- by then, CD-RW had far surpassed them in the bang-for-the-buck department, as well as the raw space department. CD-RW discs (why the spelling change? I don't know) had dropped below $1 apiece by then, and the 250 MB media were still in the $12-15 range. If you didn't think the disc was ever coming back, CD-R blanks were about 35 cents.

Mal-2

Re:How proper is the way to honor?

[Haiku 4 U (580059)]

Ode to the floppy -
the only thing that stores more
with a hole in it.

Re:thinking of the children......

[owlman17 (871857)]

what about all the data generated over the last 30 years that is stored in formats that are obsolete, on media that are redundant...how will we read a report written in 1980 on the comuters of 2080?

That's right! It doesn't seem silly at all when you think about it. My mom's a writer and routinely sends manuscripts, articles, etc to different publishers. One particular publisher insisted that she send a printed copy, refusing email attachements, CDs or any sort of soft copy, citing that 'the paper medium has been proven to be much more reliable than digital, yada yada..." Ridiculous, what a bunch of luddites I thought.

I was already thinking of asking giving them a piece of my mind about that when it occured to me even I couldn't even open my old 1990s files anymore. Not only were some of them in Iomega Zip disks, they were in old proprietary formats. (Well, that's another topic altogether.)

Another case more to the point: About a decade ago, my family decided to cobble together some sort of "time capsule" to be opened in about 50 yrs. It had several items including some files on 3.5 floppies. My dad asked me how were my grandkids supposed to read those things by then?

I guess the moral is, I shouldn't have been tied down to any (digital) storage medium, arrogantly thinking it'll always be the standard.