Floppy Drives

[d22k]

i was just curious, how many of you have floppy drives, in your recently built computers?

 

The computer im using now, i build a few months ago, and i really didnt see the need for a floopy drive (and on the whole ive had no problems, i had to stick one in to reflash the Mobo Bios, but apart from that....)

 

anhoo, yay or nay?

[Newtonian]

You need them if only for serious problems.Or formatting and partitioning your HD,after a major virus infestation.

Before anyone says you can format from windows(that wont get rid of a malicious virus),also how would you format your nice new 160GB HD.

At the moment its far cheeper to buy a floppy drive,so for me its yay.

[herme3]

I really don't see any use for a floppy disk drive. You can boot a computer from a CD-ROM and format a new HD. If you want to save data on something portable, you can use a CD-RW. They can be erased, and hold a lot more data than a floppy disk. Also, floppy disks tend to lose some of their data after several years. CD-RWs are believed to last much longer.

[YT2095]

I use floppies for lots of things, My Synth uses floppies for MIDI files, I also take documents to read on my laptop.

[d22k]

well what i was trying to get at, was that they are pretty much outdated, as herme3 said, u can use a cdrw for most things, exept flashing the mobo bios

 

Another reason i didnt get 1 tho is i couldnt find a black 1

[YT2095]

my laptop is only a little 486dx66 with no CD (or a HDD installed for that matter), and my Synths don`t have CDR either, and so you can see, to ME, I have to use them

[d22k]

You are what we like to call, a technology 'not have'

 

[herme3]

my laptop is only a little 486dx66 with no CD (or a HDD installed for that matter), and my Synths don`t have CDR either, and so you can see, to ME, I have to use them

 

My laptop is small and it has a CD-R and CD-RW burner. It doesn't have a floppy disk drive. In fact, when I was looking in the stores, I didn't see any new computers without a CD-R and CD-RW burner.

[5614]

Whilst CDs are everywhere floppy drives are still useful, some computers in public places do not have CDs or you cannot access them, also a lot of older programs are stored on floppy disks, i think they're useful to have just to back up some work (text based, as opposed to images). they might be 'old school' but still are used and can be useful.

[MulderMan]

they may not be used as much any more but at the prices now your not going to loose any sleep about them. personally i got a usb pen before christmas and it has never left my side. but that is my personal circumstances, it depends who you are and what type of storage you need. in school floppies and usb pens are the best because they only have floppy drives and usb ports on the computers, and if some computers had cd drives i certainly doubt they will be cd-rw's. using cd-r/w disks in my mind are a waste of time unless you want to store files permenantly or semi-perminantly. i just need something quick to drag and drop my files too after lessons, not waiting for minutes for a cd to burn.

[Auk]

I've got some old floppy drives lying around the house. Is there anything that you can do with them? Or should I just throw them out?

[Aeternus]

There were some old project computers (486's, pentium 75mhz's etc) which only had floppy drives and were the only computers always available in College. They had no connection to any networks other than the closed one for that room (no inet access).

 

They were perfect for our project work (no inet == no distractions, old hardware == Turbo Pascal Heaven) but alas as i said, only floppies.

 

I'll admit my card reader + sd card is far nicer and when I go to uni this year I'll be happy to forget the floppies and use the cardreader or cdrw's but I certainly won't be getting rid of my floppy drive just incase.

[5614]

I've got some old floppy drives lying around the house. Is there anything that you can do with them? Or should I just throw them out?

The actual drive itself... well they're always useful incase you needed to use it. So instal one on your computer, otherwise the one I took apart had an interesting multipole magnet.

[Dave]

I'm quite happy to say that I've not had a floppy drive for over 7 years, and haven't looked back since. From my experience, they're just not big or reliable enough for keeping documents on.

[H2SO4]

The family desktop im using right now has a floppy, but in almost a years time, I have never even put a floppy in it. I dont even know if it works right. I hyavent used a floopy drive forever.

 

But the dell i ordered (laptop) wont have a floppy drive (its a 600m, so it cant, unless you get a modular one, then you have to swap it with the cd drive) or a usb one when it arrives tomorow.

[Pangloss]

The only place where I've seen where you still need a floppy is for the very annoying procedure of installing a RAID driver when you install Windows off the CD. Slipstreaming is really a better way to go -- putting the RAID drivers onto a new CD along with the operating system installation files and the most recent service pack, which is considered a more secure method than hitting Windows Update after finishing installation. But sometimes you have to deal with whatever a customer gives you, etc. So every now and then you need the floppy.

 

(Oddly enough, the Windows installer doesn't let you load the RAID driver off an IDE CD-ROM, which is just silly, since they've obviously already loaded the generic ATAPI driver at that point, or you wouldn't be looking at the Windows installer screen! IMO this is one of those areas where MS needs to learn from what the Linux distros have been doing.)

 

(Just as another brief side note, there are a number of wonderful slipstreaming scripts out there, including one that came out with that new network security book everyone's talking about. Unfortunately I don't have the info available in front of me at the moment, but some of you may recall the book I'm talking about.)

[Auk]

The actual drive itself... well they're always useful incase you needed to use it. So instal one on your computer, otherwise the one I took apart had an interesting multipole magnet.

 

Where exactly is the multipole magnet in the drive? I can't seem to find information about it. It sounds interesting though.

[H2SO4]

whats a multipole magnet (how does it differ from a normal magnet)?

[Auk]

5614 Are you referring to the reader/writer heads on the floppy drive?

[Bluenoise]

Well no I don't have a floppy drive. It actually took me about a year to realise this, so you can imagine how little use it would have given me.

[TheGeek]

I usually use cd-rw or a usb flash drive but a flopy drive comes handy when things go wrong.

[radiohead]

I love floppy's. I keep all my programs that I use at school on them. Plus, the floppy drive at school is the only drive that isn't locked.

[Callipygous]

yes, because i had cheap(free) and easy access to a whole bunch of floppy drives, and sometimes they are the easiest way to do certain things.

[Auk]

The somewhat lengthly process of re-writing CD-RW's is so long compared to the simple

add and delete of the Floppy and like Calli pointed out they're dirt cheap.

[H2SO4]

i found them quite expensive. But they are re-writable.