What Has Your Floppy Drive Done for You Lately?

[Mac_forever]

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,103037,tk,cx072402a,00.asp


Many people, including me have wondered why do we still have these drives in computers. I haven't used my floppy drive in ages. All of my new programs are on cds and dvds. Xp doesn't even use a floppy to boot from when u have a problem. I know that they are very cheap and the pc makers might as well put it in , but How many of us really need one. One my next comp, if they give me one I will just take it out and use that space for another Hard drive or something. What do you guys think?

[Uranium-235]

Yes, I use winrar to multivolume large files into 1.38M volumes and transfer via many floppy disks to my laptop , which has no other method of transfering files

[vee_ess]

Not even serial or parallel port?!?!

I don't use them for anything, except for flashing the BIOS, which I haven't done in a while, so I don't consider that something I do.

[Mac_forever]

can't u use a cd burner on the pc or notebook? That would be a lot easier and faster.

[Uranium-235]

Laptop has no CD rom

It's a P1-100 /w 40M :)

[TheRogue]

my printer is crap and i can't be bothered to get a new one so i use it for copying h/w to my dad's comp to print stuff off (my dad has promised network since '97 and still hasn't done it, all we need is 10m of xover cable, some nails, wall cable holders and 2 holes in the ceiling!)

i have the same thing with my laptop (well my ex-laptop after i accidentally pulled a wire in my dads out of the solder and disabled the CMOS batt!)

so yea i still use my floppy drive because i don't have the money to setup a network (between 2 friggin computers that a 4m away!) and buy decent laptop :(

[Grinnin Reaper]

I don't use it much but I guarante the day after you pull it out you'll need it.

[MIK3]

the only real time i used to use my floppy drive was for simple little programing stuff like qbasic and maybe old pc games....but now i feel that there is no need for it, and further more, i think that in the future of pc industry, the production will eventually stop.....but not for a while, and i agree w/ what savage said thoroughly because those type of things always turn around and come back to slap you in the face :nod:

[Omega]

I use my floppy drive a lot. I need to transfer stuff to older computers, and run diagnostics from CLI a lot, mostly with older computers, but yes, I do use it. Until CD-R/RW drives are standard, and have really integrated support, floppy drives will still have a place.

[wizbones]

Use the floppy mostly to make boot disks, and to boot systems for troubleshooting using MicroScope - other than that dont use it at all.

With all the upgrades and faster this n that, anyone wonder why the floppy hasn't changed much since the 5.25 days?

I find it intreging and curious - everything else has been updated in some fashion. I don't think the LS drives ever really took off either, even though they were a much needed improvement over the standard floppy drive.

[TheRogue]

this was just posted on /. (slashdot.org) btw :)

[vee_ess]

The more I think about it, I come to the conclusion that I won't ever need it. I don't have to transfer anything onto any older computers that don't have CD-ROM's, and my motherboard is modern enough that I can use a CD to boot, even to flash my BIOS. The only thing that could make me need it is if I'm flashing my BIOS and my power goes out during the flash, which then erases my BIOS except for a very basic part that allows me to boot off of a floppy to fix the BIOS flashing.

[Ryon]

I just like putting a disk and saving a file large enough to fill up almost the entiere floppy and lisetning to the ehh ehhh ehhh sound of her at work ...... Mabye im sharing too much with you people.

[Mac_forever]

Don't worry about saying too much, Ryon. No one will say anything to you about the floppy thing you do. There might be others that do that too.

I don't have to worry about my computers, too. all of them have a cdrom drive or a CDR/RW drive. Even if I could not back up my files on one computer I would just bring my zip drive and copy the files and burn a cd on my other computer. I used my floppy a long time ago to back up everything on floppys to cds.

[compguru]

its because no one has 100% embraced another standard IE Zip, SuperDisk bla bla; i read somewhere tho that some company in japan found a way to store like 100 mg onto a normal floppy disk

[MIK3]

they actually sold stuff like that. it used a new file system with a whole bunch of things in each peice of info. you had to have the same drive to read it tho