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Do you think the Floppy will go

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by radiic 2 views

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According to this article http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/02/07/dell.floppydisks.reut/index.html

Dell has decided to make it an option on there higher end models. And the article suggests that other companies are soon to follow.

How about it>? Do you think you could surrive with-out a floppy drive. I know you probablly have one of those pen drives that plug into the USB.

I guess when you think about it, we could get rid of them. It would be like the phase out of the cassettetape. Thousands of tapes sitting around collecting dust, not to mention the drives themselves. Well I guess it is one more thing that we use that after a while we can do without.

Well its a good thing that I still lots of floppy drives sitting around not to mention games that took 18 disks to load ;) Sometimes for nostalgia sake, I load the games up and watch my 6 year old laugh at how funny the games were then, after about 5 minutes he asks if we can play UT. Oh well....like Elton John sings GoodBye Yellow brick road....the floppy its been a long road with one...

Rad

148 replies

by road-dog

The floppy is simply out of date and will eventually go the way of the dodo. I suspect that Dell is just the first to discontinue it.

I've already burned all of my old pictures and whatnot onto CDs. Personally, I won't miss those 18 disk software loads.

by hal 9000

NO I do not think the floopy drive will disapear after all it is the only way to boot a computer when something goes wrong and unless Del is prepared to fit CD writers to all their machines {Lets think about this for a minute a $20.00 floopy against$120.00 CD burner} I think the floopy will be around for a very long time. Just tell me which OS gives you the choice of burning a CD to create a rescue disk? Are Floops useful? Well yes they are for small programs and simple small data transfer after all who wants to burn 600K to a CD just to take a letter home to finish off. But then again I just might be biased as I still have a 10.5" Floopy disk in one of draws as a reminder.

by thechas

Where do you shop for hardware?

I am buying new floppy drives for $9, and burners for less than $10 over standard CD drives.

Other than the storage limits, the floppy is going to go away because of the cost of media.

Why burn a 600K file toa CD?
Because the blank CD is 1/10th the cost of a blank floppy!

Even CD-RW disks are usually less expensive than a blank floppy.

Yes, IT people will still desire floppy drives for a few more years. But, I doubt that they will be standard inhome or business PCs by the end of this year.

Chas

by lordinfidel

I think the floppy is an essential piece of the hardware subsytem.

I personally use it alot for things. Small text files, booting off of it!

What will happen to bios updates.... Most vendors still rely on the old, boot of floppy method.

very few have I seen that do it over windows. (rompaq and some hp's)

When I encounter a system without a floppy, it just makes it a pain in the ass.

Half of my admin utils will fit on a floppy. Some need a floppy so I can boot off of it and mount a NTFS filesystem.

What will happen to ERD's and such.

I think the floppy, like the cd-rom will be around for a while. It's just not feasible to phase them out.

Not until every machine has a cd burner, and cd-rw technology is cheaper and better, plus the make bootable cd option is easier.

by maxwell edison

Okay, let me back-peddle a bit.

LordInfidel is right about the alternative boot method, BIOS update, and the like.

So for the high-end user and/or technically inclined, we will indeed use them for quite a while. The regular "user" (whoever that is), however, doesn't do such things.

So do you think the major manufacturers (I don't buy from them anyway) will have floppy drives as an option or as standard equipment?

by lordinfidel

for the home pc...

Similiar to a modem.

But like the modem, I don't see our reliance on the floppy diminishing any time soon.

It's just such a basic tool, and when systems go bad, you need the basics.

by guruofdos

I bought a laptop recently that had two major failings. No serial port and no floppy!

The serial port was circumvented by purchasing a USB to serial converter...only, the drivers came on a floppy disk!

Ok....USB floppy time!

I still have occasion to use 5.25" floppies too, and always keep a drive in the back of the car. Let's face it...can anyone show me a mainstream motherboard WITHOUT support for 5.25" floppies in BIOS?!! I even have a couple of 8" drives for old CP/M machines and DEC PDP11's.

And isn't it funny how all FDD controllers still support 2 drives? Anyone seen a machine recently with two floppies installed?

QDI manufacture a range of excellent mobos in which the second floppy on the controller can be replaced with a 'Smart Card Reader', allowing SIM cards from mobile phones and similar devices to be accessed. As not many people use the second FDD channel, this seems like a good use for otherwise wasted resources! Unless of course you have a Connor DC120 tape streamer...

I also have a Sony TRV900 DV camcorder. It has a PCMCIA slot into which plugs...you guessed it...a 3.5" PCMCIA floppy drive for capturing stills as jpg's to floppy disk so you can port them over to a computer. Shame this drive didn't work on the above mentioned laptop!

So is the floppy vanishing? I think not!

by mrafrohead

"And isn't it funny how all FDD controllers still support 2 drives? Anyone seen a machine recently with two floppies installed?"

My main box has two installed.

A 3.5 and a 5.25 ;)

Mrafrohead

by mrafrohead

I could not imagine having a computer with no floppy drive.

I mean, you've got your boot disks. Great, you use a CD to boot into dos. But now that you've boot into dos and you want to copy that file you needed off of the machine onto your CD, but WAIT, you can't because Dos alone doesn't support that. But if you had your trusty old floppy that you would have booted off of, you could just transfer the file to your floppy and be done with it.

Half of the REAL utilities that I use for my job are on floppy disks. It would be a total waste and inconvenience to burn them onto a CD as then I'd have to go through the hassle of writing out menus to boot the disk to a particular program. YUCK.

Down with Dell for making such a poor business decision. But that's another reason to not buy prefab machines huh???

Don't get me wrong. I love my CD Burner. I mean geez, I probably burn about 50 Cd's a month. But there's nothing that can replace the floppy drive.

As a matter of fact, I still have a 5.25 drive in my main box;) Oh yeah, that's right, the REAL floppy disk;)

Mrafrohead

by cactus pete

In the last few years, I've noticed that many manufacturers no longer use DOS for the base of their diagnostic disks, but Windows. And if you build this from a CD, you can put the entire Windows environment in there...

As for all your utilities,I guess it's up to you whther you wish to filter through all the floppies to find it, or to build a menu system for yourself.

There are good and bad to both, it's really just a matter of preference now.

Besides, by the time the floppy is trulygone, something better than CDs will fill it's place.

by tbragsda

Gone from the typical users desktop? Sure. Those MAC folk have been without for a couple years now. Us, no. We will have them on servers and our own workstations for years to come.

All the posts I see say "I use them for admin utilities." Well that's true, but honestly, if most of the workstations in our networks were without, it would be fine. The cost of a FDD is so low, as a add-on, if we want, no big deal.

Things have come and gone from our PC, we find new stuff that works betterfor the average Joe, the simple truth is, the ~ user just doesn't need it.

Now, what I miss most is the RPL, diskless workstation. Windows put that to death, but to anyone that got to build a network around it knew it was a dream.

by maxwell edison

The yellow brick road led to Emerald City, a powerfully imagined place where everyone achieved their heart's desire. (For whatever it's worth.) I'm still following mine.

Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" - 2 record Album with gatefold cover - released in 1973.

I still have my original LP, and it still looks and plays like new. (Yes, in fact I have two turntables.)

And I still have my original MS-DOS 4.0 (1986) on TWO 5-1/4" floppy diskettes. (Yes, I do have a computer with a 5-1/4" disk drive.)

But yes, I'm afraid that the floppy disk drive as we know it will soon become an obsolete technology, first an option that you could pay extra dollars for, but later not available at all. I think that motherboards will soon be manufactured without a floppy drive controller. Add-on controller cards will be available for some time after that - for the old-timers.

But the shelf life of those diskettes is no longer acceptable. In fact, in my last IT meeting at our office I advised everyone to consider any floppy diskette in the office at high risk of failure - assume it will fail - so don't rely on it. We haven't bought a new floppy diskette in several years. All of the archived data from those diskettes has long sense been transferred to hard drives and/or CD-Rom disks. So we have thousands of them just taking up shelf space.

Goodbye yellow brick road.

Goodbye floppy disk drive.

Perhaps someone can build a new "Yellow Floppy Diskette Road" with all those yellow floppy diskettes. Maybe it will lead to the Magnetic City.

by maxwell edison

Based on my back-peddle as described to LordInfidel's observations, I would have to say that the floppy disk will remain, but the role it plays will be limited.

With email and the Internet, CD-R and CD-R/W, DVD, FTP, LAN, WAN and VPN, using the floppy disk for any kind of data transfer and/or data storage will be quite limited.

However, using the floppy disk for troubleshooting, maintenance and upgrading will be around for a while.

(The yellow brick road is reduced to a yellow brick path.)

by deadly ernest

The 3.5" floppy still fills a very important role in the work place and educational institutions. When you have small files that you want to move about and you cant use a network, the floppy is the best way to go. High schools and colleges still usethem for most assignment work.

The only alternatives would be the use of millions of cd's being burnt with only a few meg on them. And then being thrown out, what a waste.

At college last year I used 24 floppies to hand in 19 assignments, I got 22 of them back. And each had been used for several other assignments before that.

I am sure you want to hand in an $80 usb drive with an assignment on it, lol. And not everyone has a CD burner.

Sure the big corporate environment no longer uses the sneaker net and can do away with floppies, and that is where Dell is aiming. But smaller organisations need them for small data transfer and techs need them for emergency boot systems.

by cactus pete

A better alternative would be to leave the file on the network and give the teacher access to it, and/or email it.

by mrafrohead

If you leave it on the network or e-mail it, you are removing a layer of security.

And you know that the teacher/professor is not going to be interested in installing a program to decrypt your files...

Mrafrohead

by deadly ernest

Three reasons why we dont leave assignments on the college network for the teachers.

1. Anyone else can copy it.

2. Anyone else can change it.

3. College network is not accessable from home where most of the assignment work is done. Thisis the main reason we use floppies for the small assignments (approx 85%), the ones too big for floppies we burn to CD.

by mallardtooxx

Yes the floppy will die out, this is the natural evolution of the beast. It will happen in the next couple of years and we won't mind too much except for Lord, he'll mind cause he wants to =) I have seen a few products of interest here recently, mini-discs and the like that have 100 meg capacities and are pretty cheap, $2.50 a pop which isn't too bad. THese have the same form factor as a 3.5 and would fit in nicely.
I personally won't mourn over the loss of the floppy, but I can't say that right now is the best time to phase them out. Who knows maybe someday we'll all have flash drives in our computers and say "remember when hard drives all had moving parts?" Change is imminent, it is your ability to adapt that keeps you in the race.
-duck

by thechas

For the new PC market, the floppy disk is functionally obsolete now.

All new versions of Windows boot from the CD.

Very few files are small enough to fit on a floppy anymore.

Blank CD-R disks cost $0.15, whereas blank floppies cost at least$0.50.
A 700MB CD holds the same date as 500 floppies under Windows. 700MB / 1.38MB = 507

Yes, I still install floppy drives in the PCs I assemble.
Of course, I qualify as a "Retro-Grouch" myself.

Even so, I have used 10 floppies, and over 100 blank CDs in the past year.

Other than the W9X, DOS, and Win 3.11 systems that I support, there is no 'real' need for a floppy drive.

Chas

by hal 9000

If what you say is correct excatly why do Microsoft on Win 2000 have a utility to create a floppy boot set and all the Linux suppliers require a boot disk to be created when loading the system?

by cactus pete

Well, this is because of install base and ease. But, for the record, which Linux distro is it that *requires* you to create a boot floppy?

One of the interesting things about Linux is that you can compile it such that the whole thing boots from a floppy. This isn't exactly necessary, but still kinda cool.

by thechas

Yes, Microsoft does include a utility on the W2K CD to create a boot floppy, and most versions of Me shipped with a startup disk.

Also, after the fact, Microsoft has a download to create a floppy boot disk set for XP (4 different versions).

The reason for this is older hardware that does not support booting from a CD.

Linux is a whole different story. For the most part, Linux users qualify as Retro-Grouches.
(Yes, I consider myself to be a Retro-Grouch.)

Don't get me wrong, I still install floppy drives in the PCs that I assemble.
However, the floppy drive WILL disappear from mass market PCs by the end of next year if not this year.

The PC market is so cost sensitive, that Dell cannot justify the $2 it costs them for a floppy drive, and the $3 it costs to install the drive on the assembly line.

Once the mass market assemblers drop the floppy, the cost of new drives will indeed rise to your $20 figure, ($9 IS retail for a floppy drive at my local PC store) or higher.

While it took 3 years for the 5 1/4" drive to fade away, the 3 1/2" drive will be gone from "GENERAL" usage in less than a year.

Chas

by mrafrohead

What about your ERD for Windoze 2000???

Or the chucklehead the locks himself out of his computer and you have to hack the hash files or even their BIOS??? Programs for that fit nicely on a floppy.

There's no CD that will conveniently work forthat as a floppy will.

I think that the floppy drive is still a very important part of the computing world. And as long as I still have air in my lungs, there will still be a pair of floppy drives running in the world ;)

Mrafrohead

by jardinier

While virtually no-one was interested in contributing to my "Windows versus Mac" discussion, I now discover that a majority of posts to this current discussion are in favour of retaining the floppy, for a variety of good and tangible reasons.
So I will take this opportunity to make a passing reference to Mac's ongoing "death wish," in that they eliminated the inbuilt floppy several years ago. Personally I, too, have a lot of good software on floppy, and why would I want to use a 680 MB CD to transfer a 10 kilobyte or 1 MB file from one computer to another?

by hal 9000

You are under the mistaken impression when I quoted costs I was refering to my buying price. I was not I was refering to retail prices and yes I can buy 3.5's for a few dollars and only pay about $10.00 more for a CD Burner but then it is a shit burner that almost inveratibly fails I prefer to buy the better ones as they are only a few dollars more under $20.00 than the cheeper units. I have a suggestion for you however how do you carry a CD around with only a small file {less than 1.44 MB} I find floppies fit nicely in my shirt pocket however CD's are far more diffictual to carry around without making their presence known and leaving you suspecatible to being robbed. You can't afford this if it is something sensitive that could result in a law suit against you or the company you work for. Also Tell me which OS gives you the opportinuty to create a Boot/rescue disk on CD? They simply at this point do not exist.

by mallardtooxx

" I find floppies fit nicely in my shirt pocket however CD's are far more diffictual to carry around without making their presence known and leaving you suspecatible to being robbed "

Man if I was afraid I would get mugged while I was walking down the hallway, I think I would change jobs. CD's fit in the breast pocket of most shirts BTW and if someone is going to want to take it away from me more power to them.
"You can't afford this if it is something sensitive that could result in a law suit against you or the company you work for."

I for one don't carry sensitive information outside of my workplace and if I did I think I would prolly do it on a lap top. Not to be snobbish but it just seems a little grouchy to jump chas likethat as far as sensitive information goes well if someone wants it bad enough they will get whether it is stolen in your hall way or pulled from your network so I guess that makes the question of floppy/cdr moot in your case doesn't it?

-duck

by mrafrohead

To respond to your reply above, i'm cutting quotes...

"Man if I was afraid I would get mugged while I was walking down the hallway, I think I would change jobs. CD's fit in the breast pocket of most shirts BTW and if someone is going to want to take it away from me more power to them."

I think that he was talking more about walking down the street with the mugging... And there are some companies that deal with very strict information that CAN NOT leak to the public. For security reasons, National Security, Source Code, how Bush paid off the Florida officials etc... Just think of all of those no smoking commericals. If a computer nerd from the Tobacco companies got mugged about thirty years ago, and the information from their floppies were jacked, there probably would only be a third of the smokers there are not;) That would be very hazardous to the companys security.

On a serious note, there are some things that can not be taken, and you have to make the ultimate sacrifice to make sure that that doesn't happen. So having a floppy is a lot easier to conceal than a CD. Unless we're talking about MiniCD's. Those are a different story.

For the laptop, I hope it's encrypted;) And my last comment: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of Chronic;) Oh no, that's not it...

I actually can't remember what the pound is, but I think you know where I'm heading.

Mrafrohead

by hal 9000

Sorry I am not concerned about carring anything around the main office but as I administer a WAN I often have to travell a couple of thousand miles and sometimes take several days to reach the more remote branches {these are slowelly closing so I guess in a few years I won't be in a position of having to wait for the only plane of the day to the area I want to go after flying to a regianol center}. As far as carring a Laptop I have only had 23 stolen so far and I always carry them as hand laugage but they still go missing so I never carry any sensitive information on a Laptop. There was also a case previously where I had to appear in two court battles over information that got out from its intended source and this was always on computers that where being sold off. The first one was over a multimillion Lawsuite against the department responsible and the other was in the proscution of the person who recovered the data on the secondhand computer {He got off} If you think I am over the top just you try being considered as a hostile wittness by the people you where susposed to be protecting.

by hereinoz

Tell me mbecker, are there right wing wackos too, or is wacko-ness a condition unique to those of the left wing.

by mrafrohead

Colin: unfortunately the best that you can do about a boot disk on CD is to literally make your own.

You have to take your boot CD, and copy the files to your computer. Recreate the boot sector and set it in the CD image and THEN point out the files from the floppy disk.

Once all is done and said you'll have your boot CD. Although IMHO I think that's WAY too much work to make one. Not to mention, they don't always work properly as they can not be written to!

And the USB chip things, those will never replace it either. But I'll get to that as soon as I find that post down below somewhere;)

Mrafrohead

by hal 9000

Sorry old boy but 2 weeks ago as a favour I went down to a Medical doctors place to remove a "VIRUS" from his personal computer. Unfortantly it was a memory type and I now can't remember which one it was as that was more that 24 hours ago. Anyway I coppied a Windows 98 Floopy to a temp directory and then a complete Notrons Rescue set I placed these in a sub directory. I then altered the BIOS to boot from CD and began Gues what it didn't work although it worked when I tried it on one of my computers. Luckly I took the floppies with me and it only took a few hours to clean up the mess that had been made. Did I charge him for this? No he is removing skin cancers from me so I only thought it propper to return the favour as he fitts me in when I can get there and not when his office maager thinks I should be there. I did however sell him a copy of a Virus protection program as he had none and this was even more scary that what he got. Just how many "home" computers out there don't have anyform of virus protection on them?

by tomsal

Sorry colinluck, but not a single point you make is a strong argument. Every point you make there is an easy solution to this.

First though I want to comment on you suggesting carrying sensitive data around on a floppy.

Problem one with this is -- NEVER CARRY SENSITIVE DATA around PERIOD!! If data is that valuable first try transmitting it through means of the 'net and before you suggest the net is not secure -- I'm talking about encrypting the file first and then using email or if you are lucky enough -- how about a VPN tunnel? (They have freeware encryption utilities that have very small file sizes too btw).

Second Point - Floppys are just about the most UNRELIABLE form of media storage you can get! They are less reliable than tape, less reliable than optical storage, less reliable than CDs.

Now onto your point about why back up just a small file on a CD. First of all I NEVER do this, if a file is within a few megs I simply will email it to an account and download it (again if its important I encrypt it first). But, besides the fact that I hate wasting things, financially its easy to justify using CDs left and right - they are incredibly cheap. I just bought 100 for my office, paid just over $20 for them (that's with tax and s/h too).

Next point - CDWriters are DIRT cheap man (and yes the cheaper ones aren't that bad -- my office has a few $40 units, that haven't choked yet).

Finally - Um, you aren't aware how to save your system with just a CD? Do you know what a drive image is? Look up a program like Norton Ghost or ImageCast.

My XP system at home is imaged onto a single CD. If my system died tonight, I'd have it up and running - with all drivers, all programs, all data..at *least* 2 times faster than YOU would restoring a dead system with the old 3.5" recovery disk method you'd still have to configure some software and possibly do additional installing.

by mrafrohead

A quick addon to what TomSal is saying.

Reading what he wrote, he does have two things that I wanted to comment on.

Cheap CDr drives... I was just thinking about the forty dollar drives, and I remembered not that long ago, (yes I have a rather poor memory ;)) that LiteON released a 48X burner. It is in all seriousness one of the higher rated quality drives. And it's about 40 bucks.

Another thing, personally I prefer the TDK drives as I've had nothing but GREAT luck with it. I have burned a TON of disks on it. I mean a lot. And it's never skipped a beat, but it's a little more than the LiteOn. I think they're about 75 bucks now for a 52X drive.

As for Ghost, that's what I use for my home boxes, and it's GREAT!

Althougha question for TomSal. How did you get an XP install down to ONE cd??? I think that XP installs are bigger than 2K, but I do have a lot of extra programs on it. But the point is, for me it takes three cd's. And when I get really creative with mysystem and want to "test" something and totally just screw it up, I can run teh image and restore my computer back to what it was at backup time in about forty minutes total.

Mrafrohead

by hal 9000

I mainly work with servres in busines and even the workstations alwaya have at the very least 2 Hard Drives the C Drive is only a boot drive it contains the OS only and everything else goes onto whatever other drives are in the machines this is not to mention the RAID arrays either but then again their just data anyway. As far as E-Mailing something sendsitive well I just used to work for your Government and I can tell you there is NO! security overy any form of telephone line and as far as emcryption goes The Government MUST BE ABLE TO BREAK IT before it is released on the market. I really get a good laugh when I see politicions passing laws that require the supply of encryption keys {these are just to give you a false sence of security} or the Polies really don't know I personally go for the second option as I have yet to meet a Polly that was anything more that a jumped up moron. But to return to your nice cheep CD burners yes they probable work fine for a home enviroment but then again I am one of those old fools who prefer SCSI drives I can still remember numerious IDE CD Burners that would only work with certian media which icenditelly is no longer available {read that as Kodak} and yes I was around when CD burners first came out and it was considered cheep to buy a disk for $35.00 Au I know they are now much cheeper I actually use about 10.000 a year but then again I still use over 1,000 floppies too. Anyway all that being said you have to decide what level of security you actually want on a WAN and taking into acout you can not provide 100% safety I still prefer to carry the really sensitive data with me {on my person} and no I am not concerned about Government interference as I don't work in an area that shouldarouse their interest but then again after Sept 11 who can say what they are looking at now.

by hal 9000

Dell I think is on a winning way they will remove the standard Floppy and instead giver you the option of buying a new bueat USB floppy at ten times the price. It is good business for them at least and since thes companies sre run by accountants anychance of reducing costs and increasing profit is what it is all about. I once worked as a desinger wher the ultimate goal was to reduce the cost per unit by a fraction of a cent ths may not sound like a lot however when you run that over several hundred million units that is a very real saving. Then if you can con your customers into buying something else that they will require and costs a lot more so much the better.

by hal 9000

Dell I think is on a winning way they will remove the standard Floppy and instead giver you the option of buying a new bueat USB floppy at ten times the price. It is good business for them at least and since thes companies sre run by accountants anychance of reducing costs and increasing profit is what it is all about. I once worked as a desinger where the ultimate goal was to reduce the cost per unit by a fraction of a cent ths may not sound like a lot however when you run that over several hundred million units that is a very real saving. Then if you can con your customers into buying something else that they will require and costs a lot more so much the better.

by mrafrohead

Can you BOOT from a USB storage device???

I wouldn't think so.

Another thing though, is the twenty bucks. Yeah, that's not a bad price, but considering there are 500M devices, why stop at 16M. That's kinda cheesy.

Myself, I'm waiting for a whole Gig unit. That's affordable. Then you can hook it up and bring all of your good stuff to work with you;)

Mrafrohead

by mrafrohead

But it's so much faster to use a floppy instead of a CD.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE my CD-Burner. I wouldn't part with it.

But when you can just pop in a floppy and right click on the file and send to A:. That's much more simple than loading a disk, starting your burning program, browsing to where you need to go, selecting the file and then setting up your software for how you are going to burn it.

You'd have to pry my floppy drives from my cold dead fingers before I'd give them up;)

Mrafrohead

BTW - TheChas's prices reflect a lot more accurate also. And, if you look hard enough, you can even find those pesky burners for the same price as a regular cd drive. Although talking about regular drives, why get one of those, when you can get a DVD drive for the same price???

by thechas

I use PC idle time to format CD-RW disks, and keep a few formatted disks on hand.

Other than the time for the PC to recognize the media, CD-RW transfer is faster than floppy right time.

You can have a Send To option for your CD drive the same as any media.

I also use Smart Media. I have USB media readers on my personal PCs. Faster than the floppy, or the RW disk.

Chas

by mrafrohead

In my experience with Packet Writing, it's just not as effective, as efficient and as dependable.

I have had files just "disappear" before. It was the damndest thing. I mean, just GONE. And before you think it, no, I didn't delete it.

You can't fit as much information on a CD when using packet writing.

It's convenient at times, but I don't think that it is a viable option to floppy yet. You still have to write your lead in and lead out to your CD before it will finish the burn which adds time and actually makes it take longer than a floppy copy. And on some computers, those CDRW disks can not be accessed through the CD drive.

And, I've never seen a floppy that could not be read in a working floppy drive...

Mrafrohead

by mrafrohead

That's exactly what I was talking about above with the handy utilities.

I have a few disks of Linux that are like that. Just a single floppy. Works great. You can then port it to access all of the data on the computer, make changes and all that jazz.

Good stuff.

Cd's can't replace that.

Mrafrohead

by cactus pete

Yes and no.

You can carry a whole lot more on your boot CD, and then use your USB device to store anything temporarily. There is far more potential with this set up than with just your floppies.

Really, though, you wil always need more than one floppy anyway, if you're going to be secure about it. YOu should never be able to write to your utility disk [once you've already put the utilities on it, of course.]

by mrafrohead

"YOu should never be able to write to your utility disk [once you've already put the utilities on it, of course.]"

dpetrak - you got me on this one! Freakin touche!!!

I do keep my main disks write protected. Keeps out the virii and the voices too;)

Mrafrohead

by mrafrohead

"YOu should never be able to write to your utility disk [once you've already put the utilities on it, of course.]"

dpetrak - you got me on this one! Freakin touche!!!

I do keep my main disks write protected. Keeps out the virii and the voices too;)

Mrafrohead

by admin

They are considered only useful for "sleeper" boxes at LAN parties where I'm at. I don't put them in my own machines anymore, except I do keep one 3-1\2 and 1 5-1\4 shared on the network at home for when I need them.

Ironically, we are very dependant on them at work. All of our workstations have both an "A" and "B" floppy. We have a need for small, cheap re-writeable storage in part of what we do and that is about the only thing that fits the bill. Floppies are nearly or sometimes exactly free and we seldom have more than 700k on a disk. Until something else is this cheap, we will probably use them.

:)

by hal 9000

About 2 months ago I did a quote for a server it used a Tyan 7505 M'Board with 2 X 2.6 Xeons 10 X 146 GB IBM SCSI's HD and a couple od 200 GB Ide drives as well as a 20 GB drive to boot from and a radon 9000 series Video card the complete unit came to about $15,000.00 with the necessary software. They chose to get it made eleswhere no real problems there, at least until today I got it as an insurance quote the end product was more or less as I quoted slightly smaller drives and fewwer no RAID asmaller video card it was all well and good as when it failed & I do mean failed as there is only charchol inside it now with very little reconisable they returned it to the company who built it and where told it had suffered a lighting strike and it really looks like it. Anyway a second quote was required so they sent it to me only to satasify the insurance company. Anyway I found a 250W power supply fitted rather than the specified 550W Antec that I suggested so just out of interest I pluged in my power supply tester and it imediatly blew up on futher inspection there was 240 volts AC coming out on both the 12V DC and 5V DC lines I can't understand just why it shit itself. Everything that took power from this obviously substandard power supply is now nothing more than junk. My question is do I tell the truth as whoever built this thing should be held responsible or do I go along with the lie? The other thing is this a repair or replacment? It makes a real difference as if it is a repair the I can use the MS products again however if it is a replacement then new MS products must be supplied. Obviously the original maker will not take the responsibility and everything I have touched will not work although it just might be possible to repair the monitor. The rest is only junk. And by the way if you want my business you are welcome to it but you will have to move to Australia and then famalirise yourself with

by hal 9000

Laws as if you sell a computer to a business without a screen filter you are leaving yourself open to litergation. Also if I go along with this lie I just might find myself facing a fraud charge {Not a very good idea} and if I tell the truth I defentially will end you in court as a wittness against the original constructor. I really hate courts!!! Any way you are welcome to my hardware business as I really don't have the time anylonger I am now running a banks IT section and the hardware side is left to when I have the time you might like 23 hour days but I am getting a bit old now. Oh by the way a transaction that went through today was for some US Dollars exactly $8.95 US this cost $17.50 A and that was without the bank fee. so you mightlike to bear the difference in the value of $ from different countries before you decry the costs of items. As $20.00 A is far less in US dollars.

by mrafrohead

First off, don't compromise yourself in a lie. Do not stand for it, and stand up for what is right!!!

I understand and respect that you don't like the courts systems, but IMHO I don't think that that is a good enough reason to compromise your own integrity and self respect. I also hate having to stand before a judge. But unfortunately, that's just life... ;\

As for the dollar differences. I don't know about anyone else in here, but I assumed you were talking about American Dollars. Therefore, as you are stating you were talking about AU funds, that does make a rather large difference.

Colin, you have to remember, we American's think that the world revolves around us. Well... Because it does;) Just kidding... But when I for one, see dollars, I automatically assume it's US dollars. Yes, put on some sun glasses so my ignorance doens't blind you... You're gonna need them;)

BTW - I do know what they say about assumptions, so please don't remind me;)

And as I'm re-reading this, please note the sarcasm. EXCEPT for the top two paragraphs. There was NO sarcasm in those.

Mrafrohead

by thechas

I do understand how the 240AC got onto the 12V and 5V DC side.

The switching transistors in the power supply shorted, along with the DC output transistors.
This created a direct path from the AC line to the DC outputs.

And, yes, everything except possibly the monitor is fried.

If this were in the US, the companies I have worked for would be sending the lawyers after both the system builder, and the power supply mfg.

Yes, I often forget that many of the users of this forum are not in the US.
It doesn't make it any easier when multiple currencies are called by the same name.

Chas

by robert_onyuma

THE CONCERPT OF THE FLOPPY DRIVE WILL BE AROUND FOR THE 20YRS AND BEYOND. WHEN ZIP DRIVES EXPLODED INTO THE MARKET MOST OF US THOUGHT FLOPPIES ARE ON THERE WAY OUT, 8 YRS DOWN THE LINE THEY ARE STILL AROUND. EVEN WITH ALOT OF BOOTABLE CDs AROUND PRODUCTS SHIPPING WITH DRIVERS ON 3 1/4" NEED THE DRIVE. THERE IS NO WAY A MANUFACTURER WILL SHIP 400KB OF SOFTWARE ON A 650MB CD, WOULD YOU?
EVEN ON YOUR HIGH END SERVER THERE IS ALTERNATIVE ROUTES TO IT. EVEN THESE SERVERS RARELY USE CRTs BUT THE VGACARD IS ALWAYS INSIDE. WHY? I THOUGHT YOU COULD REMOTE ADMINISTER?

by cactus pete

I would think that the manufacturer will simply offer you the chance to download the software if there is no chance that the end user has a floppy drive.

Otherwise, I expect they wouldn't use a full size CD.

by jardinier

Words cannot express my delight in learning that so many IT Pros still install a 5 1/4 in drive in their computers. This is a practice which I have also followed up until recently when I found that original 5 1/4 in software, as well as most software on old 3 1/2 in (both DD and HD) floppies was almost invariably corrupted with the result that it damages the reading heads on my drives. So I avoid attempting to install very old software, but cannnot imagine using a current computer without new 31/2 in floppies.

by hal 9000

You are absoulty right and CD,s or DVD.s RW are the only real way to go you can record them hopefully safelly remove any sensitive data without any real bother it' s a real brease isn't it my only problem is what do you do when you travel for two days to reach a distination for a job like I did last week only to find that the computer you are going to look at will not read your CD and that it is actually trashed. Thankfully I took my floppies with me and got the job done without wasting anotherfour days to return to the isolated place where I originally went just to get out of the office for a break from the constant chos. CD's or DVD's are great if you are ceertian you are only working on one computer in one place but Floppies are indespinsible in business at least as we don't allow CD or DVD drives in every computer. We actually want to control who puts what on our machines. I know its a silly idea but then again we are only trying to make money and from my point of view at least protect the data that we have. Again I know its a silly idea but then again I only work in a semi secure place you should try working in a really secure installation then you would know what real headackes are.

by guruofdos

Naturally, everytime we 'acquire' software or data on old floppies, we drag and drop it onto CD so we can then chuck the worm media, don't we?!!

Need a floppy again? Copy the data back from the cd onto a brand new one! I have piles of CD's with floppy images on them - many taken from older Win3x machines with the software preloaded on them. There was a super program called Diskpro that then takes the archive images and creates floppy sets from the pre-installed archives (a bit like Create System Disk Set in the OEM installs of early Win95).

Of course, leave a CD-R or CD-RW face up in the sun for more than a week or so, and the CD is destroyed too! Much like leaving an EPROM on the sunniest window ledge for a week if you don't have aUV ereaser!!!

by cactus pete

[right off the bat - take that as a poke]

Is it nostalgia, or just that no one wants to take the time to really switch to something with so much more potrential?

Let's pretend that you have no floppies, whether or not you have the drive for it. What else could you use to achieve the necessary utility?

CD boot disk with ALL of your programs on it, and even a graphical environment in which to troubleshoot the system, or clean viruses, etc [try fitting all those virus defs on a floppy...], and the OS you've loaded supports USB, so you write to your little storage device.

Perhaps you needed to extract some files, totalling more than 1.44 MB. Not to mention that you can't use your boot floppy, because you should make that writableanyway! [as well as the files already on it taking up half the disk]

What about your old floppy boot disk trying to access NTFS partitions?

How about being able to fit multiple OS boots on a single CD. Add that with your USB device and you can have all 200 of your floppies replaced with just this.

by cactus pete

You files walking around the world seems a whole lot less secure to me than a properly installed NOS.

by mrafrohead

But it isn't your network and who's to say that the install was done properly???

Look at what Slammer did. Obviously we have a crap load of NAdmins that just suck phatty as they are not doing what they need to be.

And if I am walking around with a disk and you try to take it from me, you'd better be good. I don't give up in a fight. You'll basically have to kill me or incapacitate me to get it or anything else from me for that matter.

I feel MUCH more secure walking around with a floppy than having it on someone elses networks.

Just because half of the people in the world have these little pieces of paper certs, doesn't mean they know what they're really doing??? A lot of people can pass a test, but they can't do the job when it comes down to it. Practicing in the real world is a lot different than a controlled environment within a classroom where you have little miss teacher holding the students hand and making sure they feel safe and secure.

Mrafrohead

by cactus pete

Well, I'm glad it's not my network.

As for fighting you for the floppy, I think it's more likely that you'd leave it at the cafeteria by accident. Or even spill your coffee on it. [Not really a security issue, but still...]

by hal 9000

For far too long or you are as parinoid as me but then again I been working with computers long before there where PC to me a real computer takes up loads of space and in the case of a big one normally a whole building. I am giving away my age therearnt I any way when I was working with these computers in a place I can't talk about for your Government but offshore I ran across a 15 year old kid who managed to break into a susposely secure network and down load the construction plans for a new fighet aircraft and he did this on a Vic 20 with expansion pack. I bet very few of you will even know what I'm talking about but the Vic 20 had a 16K memory that was partly used for the os ran on basic programing {very lengthy nearly as big as MS products} and still had space to process things it had a tape drive for storage purposes and that was a normal cassett nothing special there but what was interesting is that the 600 KBS modem pluged into the same port as the tape drive so if you wanted to use the modem you downloaded the very limited capacity of the Vic then unpluged the modem pluged in the tape drive and stored the data. then whent through the whole operation again to get some more information. Thats all just background for most of you lot as the Vic was long before your time any way the only way this particular kid was caught was he printed the spec's in his school newspaper as a science project. It was soon after than that your Feds came storming in and arrested this littlekid he was a real security threat so they naturally used about 40 heavilly armed Feds to storm the house at around 3.00 am. They then claimed the kid was dangerious because he tried to run away {I think I would do the same thing if confronted with some fool dreesed in black in the middle of the night pointing an M16 at me as well}.

by cactus pete

Looks like you need someone to fix your network, if everyone has access to everyone else's files!

I guess in your case, with such an insecure environment, I have to admit you should be using something else.

by mrafrohead

Students are not responsible for the schools network security. The Information Services department is. And if they are incapable of doing that, then the school needs to do it.

As for keeping things on the network. Consider this.

I'll hack your network and TAKE all of your files before you even know that I was thinking about it. Now with that type of scenario, please tell me what is more secure. Networked assignments or that floppy disk???

Mrafrohead

by cactus pete

There are several ways someone could physically get the disk, if they really wanted to. You probably know this.

But I'll drop the argument. OK?

by deadly ernest

Yeah the shared area of the network is well and truely shared.

each of us has a 'home' drive where we can keep things for certain subjects etc, but we cannot get at the teachers segment of the network and they cant get at ours. we can all get to a 'public area' (have to have a college ID and logon to access) but anyone in the network can do anything in that area.

terrible security but that is how it is.

by cactus pete

I can't comment on the timeline, as I am not in manufacturing, but it seems logical enough for me.

What we need to do is embrace the potential for better servicing our own needs with newer technologies. This means learning how to handle new environments and setting up new procedures.

Floppies are restrictive, and we have to face the fact that we cannot do our jobs in the future by relying on them to still work for us.

Also, along the lines of your Dell comparison, I can imagine that MOBO shops will relish the day when they can use that real estate taken by the floppy controller for something else, or just drive down their manufacturing costs by a cent or two.

by mrafrohead

In my boot disks, I make a generic Windoze 98SE boot disk and then I customize them to fit my needs.

My main disk I carry with me all of the time, I boot into dos. From there, I have a few utilities on it so I can access NTFS partitions. Takes two seconds to load that feature. After that, there's also my Partition manager that is far superior to Fdisk. A Bios hacker and also a Low Level Format utility. The Bios hacker is basically for those chuckleheads in Audit that think they're security experts, but then forget their damned keys they enter. Low Level Format utility works well for "half-as*" wiping a hard drive if it stays internal and I don't want anyone in here that's not technically able to recover data. I have found that a LLF tends to work okay, as it's a little more difficult to restore data than repartitioning and all that jazz. And again, that is ONLY for internal use. If they go outside of the business, I use MUCH more extreme measures.

Mrafrohead

by hal 9000

mrafrohead,

I actually had no intention of calling it any ather way that I saw it but that does not mean to say I like it either. However the situation has got worse it appears that several of the computers are nonfuctional and the network is down as well {lighting strike?} The real problem is who do I blame the fool that used the power supply in the first place or the unnamed power supply as it should never have allowed AC into the computer let alone mains power which over here is 240V thatmakes a real mess of a 5V logic curcit. Let alone the CPU's. The real problem here is that this mess was sent to me by the insurance company for a quote/report and since I have done a lot of work for them I have to do the right thing as it is my reputation to do this I not only stand on toes I actually stamp then twist my foot just to get their attention. I can see I will have to go out to this business and do a full inspection/report at least I get paid for that anyway. As far as your warped sence of humor goes you are not as yet as bad as me but with some work you just might get there. It could be however that the mains stopped at a router but I'm not so sure of that and I'm not that hopefull either. Its times like this that I just want to crawl into a bed in some unknown place and hide.

by hal 9000

Actually I do work for a bank "part time" as the resident fool "genius as some say" however that's not me. I only aggreeded to do some consulancy work for them as I had to support my existing customers but it is now virtually full time and I am classed as the boss of the IT section but allowed to continue to service my existing customers {I would not continue otherwise}. Christ only knows why they approched me they must have had some silly idea that I actually knew what I was doing. I DO NOT although my work history might try to show differently. Actually almost every one of the people who have worked under me have always complained about me being a slave driver and then complained when I left wanting me back but you can never go back can you. The CEO's I have been responsible to have always hatted me as I constantly ignore their directives but on every occasion where I have tried to resign they have torn up my resignation and throwen it in the bin {that make it really diffictual} however they eventually get the idea when I simply don't come to work anymore although in one case I was put on 12 months leave 10 years ago I might even still be on their books I don't know. I am a real bastard to work with if you want to cut corners it simply will not happen with me around the job is done properly or not at all. That could be why very few like me but everyone wants me to work for them as I have never actually applied for a job and if I ever did I certinally would not get it as I have 3 PHD's and would be consired overqualified. What makes it even funnier is that these people actually think I know what I am doing, actually I insist that I am learning something new every day and the day I stop learning is the day I stop.

by mrafrohead

dpetrak-

Man, you definately got me on this one.

You're right about leaving it somewhere. Or spilling your coffee;)

I can say this though, it wouldn't be coffee for me, as I don't drink it. It'd be my AMP;) That's some good stuff...

But back to the point, you got me here. This was an area that I blindly ignored. Thank you for pointing that out!!!

Mrafrohead

by mrafrohead

I concur as I think we were starting to drift off of the topic hear and take an off ramp that wasn't on the map;)

Mrafrohead

by hal 9000

But then again excatly who do I lay the blame with as I have to do a full legal report for the insurance company and as I am 20 hours or there abouts ahead of you from my prespective at least you are talking to me from yesterady. Isn't the International Dateline a wonderfull thing? Now I have been down to the business in question and had a brief look see {read that as about 10 hours} they only have 250 computers all hooked up to the network. Actually some of them still sought of work. Personally I'm trying to get out of this one by claming that the job is simply too big {I don't hold much hope there though as this insurance company actually trusts me}. I know whayt I should do and if I must do this job I know what I will do it's just I don't want the job in the first place as I can see I will be spending quite a lot of my time in about 8-10 months in various courts giving evidence against the company that made the computer originally, the power supply importer and the power supply manafacture. And that is only for the phyisical damage then theres the damage to the company as it at ther moment can't work. Believe me you really don't want to be there. But on the other hand I suspose I can take heart that they actually got a really good deal on the computer that I quoted on they saved $500.00 Au. It was even worse when I turned up there to look at the mess. They wern't the happiest to see me and did not really want me there it got even worse when I told them just why they wherein the mess they where in I actually took some pleasure from it but that was the only bright spot of my day. I honestly do not want this job in any way as I can see myself in court for years to come without being paid for my time and worse still being treated as a hostile wittness by all the parties who are being sued I suspose this is one of the times where one of my PHD's will actually work in my farour.

by hal 9000

I agree with you all and as this is susposed to be my quite time where I am just having a bit of funn unwinding fron a less than perfect day {like everyday} I seem to be taxing my poor old little brain harder that at work {well not very likely} but personallly I like both on my own home server {yes I mean server as I operate a 12 staion LAN at home} I have 1 3.5" floppy 1 DVD RW {Sony IDE} 1 52x24x52 {IDE Sony Again} 1 Teac 50x SCSI and a now very old Traxdata CDRW4260 which is a 4x2x6 drive there are also five ide Hard drives in the case as well as another 10 SCSI Hard drives of various sizes I only have about 600 GB of space and most of it is used as well then there is the computer that I built for CD/DVD burning again this is baised on a Gigabyte Dual processor M'Board which I probably forgot to mention in the first place and both thes machines use 1 GHX P3's but that only amounts to 4 CPU's. Do I like CD's well the answer simply has to be yes or I use at least 10,000 a year however I still use over 1,000 floppies as well maybe it just old habit die hard but I have always found the good old floppy to be reliable like a few days ago I had to go out on a job and I threw a burnt CD and floppy on the pasangers seat of the car and drove for about 20 minutes to where I had to go and the CD was destroyed by the UV rays [Yes I know I should have been more carefull} but then again the floppy worked allright so there was no real problem. No the CD did not overheat or warp I actually had the AC on and it was only about 30C out anyway I personally do not find CD's to be as reliable yet as the good old floppy. That is without mentioning the recordable CD delaminating either but that is a far longer story.

by hal 9000

Anyway the long and short of this story is that I got this kid to break into my system locate a file unencrypt it which he did in under 30 minutes then russhed him out of your country with his family for the next 10 years or so He wanted to study computers at Colledge but I was of the opinion that it was far better for him to learn languages as he could probably theach computing whith what he knew he had defeated the very best defence systems then available. He was only limited to being able toget into computers that where used in english speaking countries simply because he did not understand any other language. The Cheif of the security office was totally unhappy when I told him that there currently was not a computer connected to a phone line in the english speaking world that this kid could not gain access to if he wanted to. The poor fool insisted that he was an extremily dangerious person who must be detained for yoour countries protection. Now remember this is a very long timeago and I only asked 1 question and that was "What would he be like if I was to teach him Russian would he not then be an asset?" The expresion on that particular persons face was worth all the inconvenience that I had gone through and that I would have to continue to go through. I got that kid and his family out of the US for 15 years or so he at least then had some security but I made it clear to him that he was making a LIFE decission and once started there would be no turning back. He went to university here and specalised in languages and after he was finished studying he worked with me on computer security the poor little bastards feet hardly touched the ground while he was with me I worked him into the groung and when he complained I only gave him more to do. Where is he today?

by dbgirl

What's the problem with security in this scenario? Honestly... It's just schoolwork. I always e-mailed my assignments to the professor. Not once did I have any trouble, and never did I worry about encryption. If someone wants my homework that badly, let 'em have it.

On the flip side of that, one of the professors opened a virus and had the campus e-mail down for a couple days. In that case, my professor had us e-mail our assignments to her personal account.

by cactus pete

I believe the greater reasoning was that someone could copy your work, because, in that environment, everyone could read everone else's files.

by dbgirl

That shouldn't apply to e-mail. I could see that in reference to having it on the network, but everyone can't access everyone else's e-mail.

It also doesn't take much to get ahold of someone else's floppy.

by deadly ernest

Yep I like the idea of e-mailling assignments and did so with another course at a different institution. In that one you placed the course and assignment number in the subject field and e-mailled the assignment to set address which sent you an auto-reply with a receipt acknowledgement and stamp, it then saw the assignment went to the right teacher.

But back to the main college, there is a college policy against e-mailling assignments. their e-mail system was so crappy that when they triallede-mailling assignments the system crashed as it could not handle the total traffic. Something about cross applications integrity difficulties as they network was a cobbled together mess of three seperate old networks, they just linked 'em up and let'em run.

by hal 9000

Well I don't know and really I don't want to know but I am sure he is in a very secure place and I can't help wondering if I actually did him a favour. What I do know however is that to this day I can not log onto the internet without getting a message from him. It does not matter where I access the net from within two days I always recieve the same message with no way of replying and there is no way of stoping this message as even from the bank work I always recieve the same message. I simply Email myself telling him that I'm not interested in returning to that area of work and I certianally will not work under him. Does he know more than me? Without doubt. Will he ever stop? I think not and I certianlly know he is reading all my email soif you are the sligest bit concerned about security just remember what this 15 yo kid could do. He no doubt is working in some area of your Government though I shudder to think where. Whats this to do with floppies? Nothing but someone did mention security!

by tomsal

Good response.

Realize we are now narrowing down everything from a broadscope in which my first reply was based on.

Naturally there are ALWAYS those "variables". If you are talking huge volumes of data to back up in a WAN situation...I'm assuming you have a well thought out back up strategy already in place -- that involves plenty of high capacity media drives...like tape for example.

With the email security issue - what you are saying has nothing to do with technology, so of course itmakes what I said originally seem moot. So if you are saying encryption has to be crackable by the gov't before its made available... that's not the fault of the encryption software/technology. That's government policy - nothing I can do there.

But that leads into my next thought -- even government experts would break a sweat trying to decrypt 168-bit 3DES security..

So then, if the data is worth spending that much effort to hack to get at by a government -- don't you think they'd have noproblem causing you bodily harm or even death to take the floppy from your person?

"But the floppy is small and concealed - that's the point", you ponder to yourself...

"Well an encrypted file send over a secured network means I'm carrying NOTHING on my person", I counter. lol. :)

by tomsal

Good post.

When I image, I image bare essentials.

And you did catch me on a technicality - it does require 2 CDs (700mb each) -- although only about 50% of my second CD is actually used.

The point still remains, however, that I can restoremy system if it dies -- without ever touching a floppy and since you mentioned your restore time... my system restores sligthly shorter than yours -- about 33 minutes.

As far as the fact that it only restores from the state at which is was imagedas. Of course, that's the point of an image -- to image the current state of the system.

The theory is that the user is responsible/professional/educated (whatever term works best for you..don't you just love political correctness) enough to determine the role of the system.

If you are at home and your most important data is personal finance software - well that's small enough to include in your image. Who cares if you have to re-install ICQ or AOL Instant Messenger? ;)

Likewise at work, you use an image for fast recovery of the operating system - not a method for data backup. Your data should be on tape or hell I know someone who uses optical drives.

Now what will happen when home PC's ship with terabyte drives.....um...pass me the floppy. ;)

by mlayton

Every once in a while (not often - but often enough)we need to get something off a floppy. It's less expensive to have floppy drives on the computer than to go to a data recovery service. After all, thats how backups were done just a few years agoand as mentioned earlier, many people used them for quick doc saves and things like that.

by jardinier

Dear GuruOfDOS. I think you are altogether too humble. Your seemingly boundless knowledge of everything to do with computers prompts me to nominate you as AvatarOfIT.

by hal 9000

by the way CD's arn't that permant either only today I pulled out a CD i burnt a couple of years ago only to find it discoloured around the outside edge. Not a very goos situation actually however the surface was starting to lift off in a few placesso that went into the junkheap. Unfortantly it was a data backup and it was a real nusance loosing it but then again I'll get by without it what other choice do I have? anyway If you lose a floppy no big deal as there isn't that much data really buta CD is a silghtly different story. And now with the advent of DVD wrtiers why bother with a CD burner when you can use a DVD burner? That's a simple as currently I don't expect any other DVD drive to be able to read a DVD I burn {its nice when it happens but don't place your trust in the current crop of DVD burners} the sooner they get a standard the happer we all will be won't we? Anyway why settle for 700 MB when you can have 4.7 Gig? I did however find something interesting today it seems that our premier Semi Government run centre is looking a a mold/fungus that affects manfactured CD's the story only was talking about music CD's however as our data CD's are made the same way it would only be sensible to suspose that the same applies to them as well. I wonder would MS replace a CD that had been affected by this fungus? Any call me oldfashioned but I still love my good old floppies they just seem to go on and on without complaint the CD/DVD while good are not always the best solution and there is the unfortant beliefe out there that they are a permant solution and with the real pro's at best a semi permant solution. The actual fact is that all these have their place and it all boils down to what you personaly prefer.

by hal 9000

Amongst the Pigeons. Just think in a few years time we will be having this same old argumnet only this time it will be why bother with CD's when you can have a DVD? This may be sooner than you expect as well as there is now a concerted push to introduce an industry wide standard after all the same thing happened with video didn't it? First there was the Beta-max then VHS well just try to find a Beta recorder/player today letalone get media for it. Sure it was the better system but VHS was licenced to everyone so it took control. It is not always the better system that getts ahead it is what is massmaraktable eventually the more you sell of a certian type of product eventually that will come to be the standard! Sure its outside the computerindustry but it still holds true. Remember the Laser Disk? Just try finding one now. So lets get on with something more productive.

by hal 9000

Even when DVd Burners are standard and the CD has gone the way of so many species I still think there will be floppies fitted to all new computer or at least the better ones. And that fancy little USB ram stick well call me silly but I don't think it will last unless it is introduced into a lot more things than just the computer industry after all I can remenber a time when there was what was called a RAM Drive this was a hard drive without any moving parts it simply was a whole lot of nonvolitial ram stacked together Sure thaey where limited to about 100 Meg but so was the then current IDE drive and look where thats gone without the RamDrive either I might add. These new fangled things are all well and good but the tried and tested thingsare still around after all who can justify SCSi Hard Drives they cost about 3 times the cost of the same size IDE alternative but by God they are still used and I actually prefer them in Raid arrays but then again that's just me. However all the really good raid arrays have SCSI drives it is only the semi-professional ones that use IDE. And I still use Scsi drives everyday without any thought as the most IDE drives you can manage to stack into a computer without a Raid is 8 but even the most basic SCSI supports 14 bitts and the better ones support up to 15 per channel. They still have it over the IDE in my book.

by tomsal

SCSI Raid is still the only "true" RAID as far as I'm concerned.

The integrated Raid controllers in "off-the-shelf" mobos --- like Promise raid -- that's definitely just "novice" stuff there. But then I can sort of understand why some people like getting "IDE Raid" -- so they can see a single huge volume off of many drives and you can gain read performance as well.

Anyway, floppies will be retired enmass I think in the next 5 years or so.

The reason why the "tried and true old time devices" like floppy and SCSI stick around - is because they were tested well, but mainly because the standards got "accepted" / "adopted" by many mainstream manufacturers/vendors. I don't care how wiz bang your product is - if you can't make a standard for it that all can agree on, it will die before the world knows it even existed.

by thechas

Have you heard about the other bad batch of CD-R blanks?

It seams that some air or other gaseous material got trapped between the layers of the CD.

When you burn these in a high speed burner, they get hot enough, fast enough, that the CD explodes from the pressure buildup.

I don't remember where, but I read an article on the archival properties of computer media.
The CD had the top rating, SO LONG as only specific brands from the test were used.

The article went on to recommend that you make 3 copies of any critical data.
1 for use, and 2 for storage.
Should something happen to the in use copy, it was recommended to create a whole new set!

Like it or not, the floppy drive is going to disappear from most mass-market PCs, as they are of zero perceived value to the average user.

Next to go, will be the COMM Printer and PS/2 ports.

Look at notebooks and the tablet PCs.

Chas

by deadly ernest

An article I saw years ago stated clearly (after many tests) that CDs have the longest storage capability after film. But like all storage media they need to be kept in a tightly controlled environment to get the time span. That is low humidity and low temperature. Put them in the archive vaults and they will outlast all other forms of electronic media currently in GENERAL use.

A guy in the USA has been working on a jelly type substance that will store data at the molecular level and it willlast much longer survive in higher temps etc. Trouble is the cost for the hardware to write and read is abit much at present. over the last 10+ years he ahs improved the system and made it much cheaper. The gel itself currently runs at a few cents per cubic inch and that hold trillobytes of information.

Image 10 years time, 'Can you give me info on a jelly?'.

by thamer

Even though, ... the cannibalistic effects of CDs on floppies are undeniable ... it is a sobering reality among manufacturers that computer technology will force the floppy disk out of mainstream consumer markets by 2010.

The declining growth rates, the lowering margins and the complexity of today's "memory intensive hogs" that makes floopy disk(FD) manufacturers to venture into other storage media like CD-R and DVD. (FD-1.38MB can potentially hold data up to 200 pages, CD-650MB can hold data of 470 FDs)

It is on the hands of the manufacturers to support their diskette operations and reap profits for them to continue to market their products and services. (Sony and digital photography)

.......
...........

Even in its twilight, I believe that floppy disk will still be a viable format for data backup, setups and ... work.

by hal 9000

When we only needed 100 Meg Hard Drives 1 Meg of memory and God Gates saying he could never percieve a time that more than 640 K of ram would even be required I was actuall in the room when he said it. Any just why do we need all this much storage space? Have the programs got better? O r is everything just suffering from code bloat have a look even the virus writters are spewing out bigger and bigger virus. We seem to be in an age where bigger is better therefore the biggest we can get is the best. Only with the exception of XP show me an office program that will not run on a humble 486 with 4 Meg of ram and only a few K of video card capacity. Sure the games need these really high end machines but does the average office? Currently we arein a position where just for greater profits the computer industry is going faster and faster just to have the next fastest/biggest or whatever it is a vicious cycle which is spiriling even faster as time goes on. And somehow the industry has convined our CEO's at least of the need to constantly upgrade so we have bigger/faster and better I think they have taken their marketing stragity from the car industry where new is always best. I gues that explains exactly why there are so many clasic carenthusits out there and these old beasts are often worth far more than the new beaut things just off the production line. Isn't it about time some connon sence prevailed here sure really big business does need a very lot of storage space but they seemed to manage when Univac was around didn't they. Here is a question for all of you out there what would you like to have as a play toy at home the lattest Quad Processor computer with almost unlimited amounts of ram, drive space and God only knows what else or something like Univac?

by jardinier

This is proving to be a most fascinating and informative discussion. Perhaps some altruistically motivated person should advice Steve Jobs to read it. As Mac eliminated the inbuilt floppy several years ago, perhaps because it wouldn't fit in their new range of multi-coloured translucent computers, Steve is probably wondering why most people still prefer PCs.

by hal 9000

The Apple farentirnty actually call PC's Dos Boxes and threat them with total contempt. They do not even consider them as compitition but then again I don't suffer from tunnel vission I can't see how a realitivly small player in the computer industry has the gall to think they are the only computer manafcatures in business. It like I sad else where what proves to be mass maraketable always setts the standard and a few days ago I noticed an add for the new apple claiming it was the ulitment Linux computer. My God the rest of us have been using Linux for God only knows how long but it appears apple has just found out about it. I can remember a time long ago {in a galaxy far away} when I worked for IBM the good old Big Blue where Thosichiba brought out a mainframe that actually blew Big Blues product into the weeds it really was so much better. There was quite a lot of fear at IBM and the designers where set the task of doing a total redisign. Any the outcome was the Japanise product while being vastly superior never took off simply because it required that after you bought one you had to get a programmer in to write whatever you needed then stay around for God only knows how long just to work out the bugs as they arose. The moral of this story is that technical superior is not always the best you have to be able to actually use the thing! Aple is finally learning this and are now making their machines capable of using their opersition programs. And remember all this originallycame from Zerox with the Lida which they destroyed after showing Stev and Bill it and they returned to what they did best as the PC market would never take off. Everything since is just an attempt to get to where Zerox was 30-40 years ago.

by theven

This is the most assinine post I have ever read. If these are the kind of people I'm surrounded by in my industry then we're all screwed. Why are so many techies such left-wing wackos?

by theven

Sure there are right wingers, but they tend to hole up in places like Waco or keep to themselves, while the lefties relate every topic and discussion to their politics. They're like political evangelists. If I spend a couple hours with a leftie ona tech issue or even just eating lunch, I'll get at least a couple of really strange political comments from them. What I'm saying is I run into this constantly from leftie techs, but almost never from the right. And "left-wing wacko" doesn't meanall left wingers, it means people who can't extricate Election2000 from their daily lives and conversation.