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. "

Drugs to help

[LiquidCoooled]

I thought Viagra was designed to stop floppies?

Floppy drive?

[Ragnarok21]

No need for them...I back my important files up to a Digital RP06 drive :-)

Re:Again

[Naffer]

Yea, I'm with you. I won't belive it unless Netcraft confirms it!

floppy RAID!

[spoonyfork]

What "death of floppies" article would be complete without a link to Floppy RAID! [8k.com]

The way of the horse?

[colonslashslash]

the floppy disk is going the way of the horse upon the arrival of the car

So... my old floppy disks will be put out to stud and possibly race each other, whilst other more modern disk mediums will pollute the atmosphere and cause a few hundered thousand serious / fatal road accidents a year? Interesting analogy, yet a bleak look at the future of data storage.

+1 insightful for Taco!

Re:Drugs to help

[tigress]

Mine is eight inches! [8in.net]

Re:And as usual, Apple is the pioneer

[Minwee]

"First" to 64-bit on the desktop? No, but some random company someone has never heard of doesn't really count.

I know things have been tough for Digital Equipment Corporation since they were bought out, but this is the first time I have heard them described as "some random company someone has never heard of".

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm hoping that someone will do a BIOS that lets me boot from gmail.

Never used floppies...

[sgant]

I still load all my programs in with a cassette tape recorder...never bought one of them "floppy drives" for my computer as I thought it wouldn't last.

Turns out I'm right after all! Saved my self some bucks.

Though it takes about 2 hours now to just boot my computer off the cassette. And I won't even begin to tell ya how long it took to compile Gentoo.

Re:About Damned TIME!

[QuijiboIsAWord]

Wait...you have desperate college girls coming to your door begging you to save them....and all youre getting is lunch?


Wait....what type of lunch?

Re:Journalists should listen to industry leaders.

[GigsVT]

Viruses?

You used tapes?

[Anonymous Coward]

You wasted your money my friend. I stuck with panel switches. lasted me all these years and i was laughing, yes, laughing when i saw you messing around with those reams of tapes.

still, its tough when you break a nail or three compiling Gentoo. almost done now though.

Re:Again

[garbletext]

I was trying to reinstall Windows ME for my sister-in-law.

So the poison in her tea didn't work, then, eh?

Re:It's about time...

[andrewmc]

Is it just me, or does everyone else have like 50% failure rate on floppies?

Yup, almost exactly 50%. It claims it works when I write to them, and will almost certainly fail when I try to read from them.

Floppyz Not Dead....

[Anonymous Coward]

No way man, I use floppies for all my installs...

Has anyone got disk #543 for Doom 3, I seem to have lost it...

Re:Quote from TFA

[alacar]

And when something is too large I burn it to a CDROM or DVDROM.

And how do you do that ???

Not quite a dupe

[Dirtside]

But seriously, 1998 called and it wants its "Death of the Floppy Disk" story back. Jesus.

(I'll head off the obvious response now: "2001 called, it wants its joke back." Thank you, I'm here all week.)

Re:Quote from TFA

[Cajal]

Well, if you're using a decent computer, like a Mac or a Sun, you don't need to use a floppy disk to update your firmware :P

The Lorena Bobbit Virus supports the floppy

[Gary Destruction]

It cuts your 9 inch hard drive down to a 3 1/2 inch floppy and throws it out Windows.

Ma, I'm gonna have to put the floppy down

[Cumstien]

Yes but this means if your floppy becomes lame, as they frequently do, you can take it out back and shoot it. God Bless America...

Re:Quote from TFA

[jmcmunn]

Actually, yes. I boot from USB occasionally. I have a very light version of Knoppix (also BartPE) that I can run from the USB pen drive that I have.

And if you don't want to use Usb, almost all CD-rom drives can boot a disk these days. So just take that "floppy boot disk" and burn it on a CD and you're golden.

I honestly can't speak of doing a Bios update without a floppy, because I have never had the need to update the Bios on my machine, but now that I have said it I will likely have to do it later this week. D'oh!

Re:Quote from TFA

[Mysticalfruit]

El Burrito?

Is that when you take a bootable cdrom (also know as an "El Torito") and roll it up?

Re:Quote from TFA

[mikael]

And when something is too large I burn it to a CDROM or DVDROM.

And how do you do that ???


With a magnifying glass and a large pair of reading glasses. But you have to wait for a sunny day with a clear sky, and to make sure you have memorized the sequence of one's and zero's you want to burn. It's very easy to forget which block of data you were writing. And do be careful not to look towards the Sun when you're wearing your reading glasses.

DUH

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, old technology becomes obsolete.

Re:Quote from TFA

[Mateito]

I mean -- if you breathe on a floppy wrong, you'll lose your data

And what, exactly, is the right way to breathe on a floppy?

9600/8/N/1

[karlandtanya]

It's slow, but when nothing else works...

But what will happen to...

[Anonymous Coward]

What will the "save" icon become once the general public has forgotten the venerable floppy?

Floppy what?

[rhesuspieces00]

Floppy? What is this floppy you speak of?

(Mac User)