Will the floppy disks disappear???...

Guys,

Reading this article here it made me think (and ask you) about the floppy disks future. The article says Dell will stop using floppy disks for some of their computers models replacing these floppy drives with other bigger storage alternatives.

What do you think? Will the floppy disks disappear in the future? Do you want this to happen or do you prefer to keep it to store and carry small info quickly?

Personally, i don't care if it disappear but only if they are replaced by other similar and better storage systems with more capacity to store data. Zip drives aren't the exact good replacement yet. Not everybody can have a Zip drive and weren't made exactly to replace floppys.

What are your opinions?

Thanks,

DKRR

i say get rid of them.

it's so easy to burn a cd, i think it's a good idea to phase them out.

...thinking....the last 3 computers i built, i don't even think i used the flop...
But the key to that was an Internet connection....

They can't be doing it for a monetary reason, since they only cost 10 bucks.

And with RAID becoming a 'standard', you need more room for your hard drives in the box.




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Everything should be as simple as possible, but not more so.
-A Einstein

I agree, get rid of em.

I am using a "pen drive" now that holds 128mb. I can take it from PC to PC and it even mounts in linux. I couldn't ask for something better. Heck, I even use my MP3 player a portable drive. Who said I had to use it only for MP3s? lol

The only reason I could not see getting rid of a floppy drive is because of boot and emergency disks. With most CDROMs able to act as a boot device, then that won't be a problem. Heck, you can even copy a boot disk to the CDROM and have it emulate the floppy disk.

Maybe in some cases this could be a problem, but not like you don't have a bunch just laying around collecting dust. I can't remember the last time I used mine...

I guess I'll pay the extra to have the floppy. I can't see using a 600 -800 MB CD to give someone a small file. There are applications where a standalone computer is adviseable and the sneakernet is the standard.

You bring up a good point, fourdc

The reason that the floppy is still here is because it can be formatted and re-formmatted, pretty much on the fly. I don't think it's necessarily the size. The floppy has the great ability to be dragged out of a box in your closet, or where ever, formatted and be used to boot up your computer to install the os to.

So, in that instance, I agree that the flop is here for a while. When we work the bugs out of re-burning cdroms, I do think they will be in the pile of 5 1/4's.

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What do you think? Will the floppy disks disappear in the future? Do you want this to happen or do you prefer to keep it to store and carry small info quickly?

Personally, i don't care if it disappear but only if they are replaced by other similar and better storage systems with more capacity to store data.

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Over time, I can see the floppy being phased out, but I do not see them going away any time soon. I still use them for school, and it stores small files nicely. The drives are cheap too. I get them by the armload for free :D

regards

I personally wouldnt miss it or probably even notice, because i rarely if ever use my floppy drive and i'd actually like the zip to become a new replacement for the floppy but albn also made some good points as well about its uses still.

with the success of USB devices that can store fairly large amounts of data in a small object that you can have on your keyring, yes theyh will become obsolete over time, but here is where the dilemma part comes in, many used computers still dont have USB and some people cant afford USB as yet

and what about the poor people on networks at schools or uni's where the sys admins basically forbid any hardware or anything other than discs / cd's to be used on the machines, a USB device is classified as hardware so there is 1 rather large problem, also this brings up the point of piracy through a high speed network that is usually available at scholl or uni, a 128 meg usb drive can hold much more pirated stuff than a floppy, so there would need to be some sort of fix there, then you have to convince the admins that it is all the way of progress....

geez... whata damn rant :)

The best attempt so far at replacing the floppy was the LS120 drive. Why it did not work out is probably more economics than computer science. If they could come up with another solution, similar, but perhaps more flexible (think a range of different size disks and faster). Then floppies as we know them will come to an end. However I don't think that any of the existing storage devices will replace the floppy.

I think to ban the floppy disks is not a good idea because it is still getting used in a lot of educational institutes and businesses.
But if technology invent something better in future I think they should keep this point in the mind that what is they are going to produce in the market and I am sure it is not going to happen at least next 5 years.
Good post though and as always I am going to give you points.

floppies (8 and 5 1/4) are already dead only the 3.5" (not realy floppy) exist anymore.

I haven't used one in ages :D

Oh yeah I had to install a realtec (realcrap) networkcard on an old puter.. I used a floppy..

Damn, I think we'll be forced to useing floppy's for ages and ages after ;)

I would like to see the floppy get replaced by the zip disk but in no time soon will the floppy disappear. After working a year in the field(contractor) I couldnt believe how much I started using floppy disks again. i.e. win 98 boot disks, killdisk (wiping old hard drives), norton ghost (imaging, and backing up pcs), server builds (used a boot disk to load drivers to install the OS over the network instead of doing it via cds), password reset reboot disks, and so many more things. I couldnt believe how many floppies i started to carry around. My favorite disk utilizes a program called MTL data recovery. It could pull data off an erased and written over hard drive. was pretty cool. just my 2 cents on the ol floppy

Floppies are as obsolete as bicycles

I think the price of writable cd's needs to drastically come down to something like $.05 per cd. I dont use floppies, but it would be nice to get cd's really really cheap. Its too bad you cant re-write over those aol discs.

I say keep them I use them for small data, but if something better comes along then I'll love that.

If not I'll still keep mine and I still have a 5 1/2 inch floppy drive laying around here some where. Why? don't know.

i use a mini cdrw.

it fits in my pocket and i can write on it a million times, what more could i want?

I think it is a good idea if the floppy disk disappear ONLY if it is replace by another solution with bigger capacity. Nowdays files becomes biggers and biggers (like music, video, ...) and if I want to give a friend a (big) file I don't want to burn a CD only for one file.

The floppy capacity is now too small and it must be replace by a better solution.

y not burn to rewritable?
also mini cd's are smaller than stanard.

my opinion is that floppies will phase out when the cdrom becomes faster to write to. now they take at least 4 times as long as a floppy. just to burn same size files.

but cd's do have more room and when they get faster the next generation will go, what were floppies. hehe

Personally speaking, floppies have always been a good practice to have.

However the arguments of cd-rw and usb devices are great....

The worries of using a large CD for a small file can be taken care of when mini-cdrw come out. :thumbsup:

While I believe that the removal of floppy drives is a good idea (due to floppy frailty and limitation on size) I would also suggest maybe having usb drives as back-ups in case of cd-rom failures for boot (as a back-up)

Just my 0.02$

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when mini-cdrw come out

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they have come out ... they are out.

CD-ROM drives acturally are faster, but there is a lot more work that needs to be done to the CD first. It needs to test the laser before writing, read/write a TOC, write a couple MB of *BLANK* data (that's right, *BLANK* data), write your file, and more *BLANK* data. Also, the error-correction data... But, at least 10-13.5MB of *BLANK* data per track, if I remember correctly.

There is quite a lot that goes on when you make a CD. There might be much more things that can vary between CD-ROM drives than Floppy Drives. For example, not all lasers write at the exact same darkness, but they are close enough in most cases that it is easily cophensated for. There might be some stuff like that for a floppy disk, but there is much less to keep track of, and it is much faster, and probably more field-proven, seeing as to how long they've been used.


I personally don't see the use of using a CD for a small file - even a 1KB file would acturally take up about 14MB on a CD. Floppies are easily reusable without having to erase for as long as a CD (CD-RW bulk eraser?), and you can decorate them easier by putting multiple labels on top of each other. But, I like the Floppy Disk for small stuff, my Memory Stick (128MB Flash) for medium / daily files, and at times a CD for huge files and backups.



CD Data Format Information (Mainly Audio CD, but applicable)

Where I got this info from: CD Architect Help File
BTW, the Orange Book talks about Recordable CD’s

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Power Calibration Area

Within every compact disc there is a PCA that is reserved specifically for testing the power of the CD-Recorder laser being used, and a Count Area which keeps track of how much available space is left in this area. Each time a disc is inserted into the CD-Recorder drive, a calibration is automatically performed to determine the optimal laser power for “burning” the disc. Over time the power level of the laser will need to be adjusted to properly respond to changes in recording speed, temperature, humidity, and the condition of the disc. Each time this calibration occurs, it is incremented in the Count Area. A maximum of 99 calibrations can occur on one disc.

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That is where laser brightness, etc., is calibrated...

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Lead-In Area

The Lead-In Area comprises approximately the first two minutes on any compact disc and is generally unused for recording actual audio data. The main purpose of this area is to store the Table of Contents (TOC), which keeps an account of each track’s location on the disc. The TOC is written to the Lead-In Area of the disc once all of the information has been recorded to the disc. Before the TOC is written, only the recorder can access the disc. Once the TOC has been written to the disc, any CD player or drive can play the disc.

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That was for the TOC...

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Lead-Out Area

The Lead-Out Area contains 90 seconds of silence (blank sectors) and serves as a buffer area in case the player reads past the last track on the disc. This area essentially does nothing more than let listeners know the music is over. Lastly, the Lead-Out and Lead-In Areas are the portions of the disc most likely to be damaged as a result of handling. As you know, discs are most commonly handled by the edges, if audio was stored in these areas, it would likely become difficult for your CD player to read.

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The BLANK data. 90 Seconds - about 1.5Min, about 8MB/Min, so about 12MB of blank data... There are similar things one a per-track basis, I think, but I don't know for sure...

-Tim_axe

Floppies? What are those?
Jeeze PC users are still in the dark ages, Macs haven't had floppies in ages. ;)
Seriously, when I was contemplating getting a Mac laptop I couldn't conceive of a computer without a floppy drive, so I bought one for the hotbay... Boy was that stupid. Now the only reason it ever gets used is if Winblows users have problems and I have to try and save a corrupted M$ Word doc, or if I have to d/l a virus cleaning utility to clean of a Winblows user's box. I only ever use it if I have to fix PC's...., funny that.
My cd-rw and iPod work wonders as portable storage, and should my printer die, I can just drop the file onto the fileserver and print off of a lab machine.
At home, same basic thing, my house is WiFi and wired, my friend's house is just wired, and my other friend's house is WiFi as well. So two out of three I can walk in turn on my laptop and drop the file onto a shared folder, the other one I have to plug in a wire first...

docs go through e-mail easily, as do pics, as do small apps, floppies were the 1.44MB/walk ethernet, now we have 100mbs+sit, I don't know about you, but I am pretty keen on sitting. (Of course it is 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and with windchill it claims to be -14, so that might be why I am opposed to moving).

Dhej

We already got rid of ours....we now only buy laptops with seperate FDDs simply because we only use them once in a blue moon (and it gave us an excuse to buy wireless equipment!

Of course the problem with this is - sometimes the network fails and we can't back up to hard disk and without floppies, that five page document you've been slaving over for the last hour is lost forever.

Rachel

I could agree, that in the windows-world floppy drives might have become obsolete. But I think, in the age of gigs of cheap harddiskspace, it is some specific kind of art to compress an OS to a single floppy disk and addtionally put very useful software on it.

For some examples just have a look here: http://www.toms.net/rb/ or here http://www.fli4l.de/

Using fli4l I have revived an old 486DX40 and use it as a DSL-Router. It happily runs without any HD- and CD-Drive just with 2 ethernetcards and one floppy.


Uhu

Just replace them with LS120 drives (that way if you still had to, you could read floppies)and no ZIP drives aren't the answer, they are the problem.