Finally, Death of the 3.5 inch floppy disk

That's nice, but USB flash drives won't ever map to A: or B:. This is done intentionally, and it makes perfect sense. But it doesn't help the fact that Windows will not look at *any* other drive than A:.

So, that leaves USB interfaced FDDs, or, as already suggested, creating an alternative boot disk with the drivers included.

Reply to
John Tserkezis
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I have a Flash Drive that mimics part of its space as a USB Floppy that *does* map to drive A: or B:. Unfortunately it doesn't work very well with most systems. :(

Of course this is all only just for WinXP (ie. that Windows release from 8 years ago), or Server 2003 from 7 years ago..

Vista & Win7/Server 2008 either release have methods to read in RAID/HBA drivers off flash or USB devices during installation while booted into WinPE. And its easy to make a new WinPE boot environment with said drivers if needed.

Reply to
Doug McIntyre

a few years ago when I got a stack of dell 1U servers they all had a USB floppy drive in the box with manuals etc.

-Lasse

Reply to
langwadt

I have stashed away 3-1/2" disks and also 5-1/4" floppies. In production the lifetime of machines is often many decades and there are numerous machines that will not be re-programmable via any other means.

Until recently we paid an extra tax via the phone bill to finance the Spanish-American war which AFAIK ended in 1898 ...

We learned how to take good photographs, in my case I took classes. Because the cost of a 24 or 36 roll of 35mm film (or 12 exposures in the

6cm by 6cm days) was rather substantial and you could not waste any of it. So we spent some time getting the lighting right, making sure everything else was just right, and so on. Often there was no chance to re-take a shot because you would not know until several days later whether the result was ok or not.
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Regards, Joerg

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Reply to
Joerg

I have some disks from 1993 that are still readable. I have some from later that are gibberish, reformat did not help them come back to life. Guess it depends on the manufacturer.

Reply to
SG1

Let's assume a retail price of 50c a pop. And that's a lot because that is what I paid in the early 90's for top quality disks. This would be $4.25 million in gross revenue. In the world of big corporations that generates a long-stretched yawn, followed by the drop of the axe.

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Reply to
Joerg

Interesting. What's decaying about them? I've got Fuji MF2HD from the

90's and they still work fine.
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Reply to
Joerg

No wonder the sales have fallen, I have not seen any for sale for a year or so in any of the big chains or even computer markets.

formatting link

Reply to
F Murtz

formatting link

They are still around but the usb stick far out sells them

Reply to
atec7 7

Hardly surprising because Sneakernet with a floppy = 1.4Mb.

Sneakernet with a USB stick = several Gb.

Reply to
Magnum

HA!

formatting link

The mystery of the mega-selling floppy disk By Jason Palmer BBC News

Sony has said it will stop making floppy disks, after nearly three decades of manufacture. Yet millions of them are still being bought every year. But who is actually buying them?

Stack of floppy disks (Eyewire) That's about one snap on a brand new digital camera

The floppy disk is the very symbol of storage; when you want to save a file, you go looking for that little icon that looks like a floppy.

Every year another computer manufacturer stops putting floppy drives in its machines, or a retailer stops selling the disks. Each time the cry goes up that the death knell has been sounded for the floppy disk.

However, Verbatim, a UK manufacturer which makes more than a quarter of the floppies sold in the UK, says it sells hundreds of thousands of them a month. It sells millions more in Europe.

"We've been discussing the death of the floppy for 14 years, ever since CD technology first started coming on strong," says Verbatim spokesman Kevin Jefcoate.

Yet what was Sony's best-selling peripheral for its computers in recent years? The 3.5-inch floppy disk drive that connects via a USB cable.

Somewhere out there, the floppy disk is alive and well. But where?

Disk-credited

The truth is the 3=BD-inch, 1.44 megabyte floppy - the disk that made it big - has always defied logic. It's not floppy for a start. The term was a hangover from its precursor, the 5=BC-inch floppy, which had a definite lack of rigidness about it. However, its smaller successor held 15 times as much data.

But then along came the CD-ROM, and then the USB flash drive shamed them both; the most voluminous USB stick - which could pass for a keyring - can now hold nearly 90,000 floppies' worth of data.

"Old habits die hard, I guess... If you you don't do much in the way of photography or music, then why would you change? John Delaney, research director for IT analysts IDC

Sony signals end for floppy disks

One might be tempted to think that, like the vinyl enthusiasts who insist music sounds "warmer" on a record, the floppy has its own fan club. But unlike the case of vinyl, a digital format of a floppy is no different than that found on your hard drive or USB stick.

Given their limited size and speed of data transfer, along with their increasing obsolescence, it's harder to find a floppy fan club than it is to find a laptop with a floppy drive built in.

But what about all the second-hand computers that are donated to the developing world? Could they be even partly responsible for the thousands of disks still sold?

Anja Ffrench of Computer Aid International - the largest charity working to distribute recycled IT to Africa and South America - says that they only deal in computers from 2002 and later, meaning that they'll have the USB connection that obviates the need for floppies.

There are a few instances for which floppies remain the norm, like the specialist, high-value technology that may rely on floppy drives for data.

Saving grace

The vast desks that control the light shows and sounds settings in theatres or music venues have until recently come with floppy drives as standard; the English National Opera is just one example of an organisation that uses them. Mixing desk, Top of the Pops One place you might find at least a few floppy disks

A volunteer at the National Museum of Computing says that many scientific instruments - so-called dataloggers, oscilloscopes and the like - record their data onto floppies.

This kind of expensive equipment is made to last, to be bought infrequently - and these gadgets may call for at least a few floppies in their lifetimes.

But these relatively niche uses couldn't possibly account for the number of floppies - something like a million a month - that are being consumed in the UK alone.

The answer may simply be that there are a great many old computers that read only floppies, and a great many computer users that have no need for the storage media that have supplanted them in other quarters.

Rather than there being one industry propped up on the values of a floppy, or a horde of enthusiasts buying up the world's supply, they may simply be as much as many computer users need.

"Old habits die hard, I guess," said John Delaney, research director for IT analysts IDC.

"If you've been using PCs for a long time and you don't do much in the way of photography or music with them, then why would you change?

"There are people who ride technology for as long as it can be ridden without falling over."

Reply to
larwe

Tell that to any older machine that wont usb boot or certain version of winblows if it needs sata or other drivers on install

Reply to
atec7 7

You can *sometimes* revive old diskettes with media level tools like SpinRite ... but diskettes gradually lose their magnetic media (the head touches them) so it depends on how much has been lost. Even if the diskette appears unreadable to the OS, IME you can usually recover most of the data from it.

George

Reply to
George Neuner

The media does not have high enough coercivity to retain magnetic alignment indefinitely - given enough time it loses orientation and your data simply fades away. And unlike hard disks, diskette R/W heads actually touch the recording surface and gradually wear away the media.

George

Reply to
George Neuner

Well... sorta. The magnetic layer is covered with a low-friction protective layer.

So strictly speaking the heads do not touch the recording per se, merely a coating over it :) But yes they are not flying heads.

Reply to
larwe

Hmm, I have disks dating back to 1990 and none of them has ever lost data or caused read errors. But some posters said that they still can have lost writeability. No idea why.

I did always make sure to never buy disks from dubious sources but always the good stuff, name brands.

Yes, and that wear is clearly visible. However, the typical disk is used as file storage and only once in a while read back, and then only small parts of it.

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Reply to
Joerg

I have an old HP logic analyzer that boots off of a floppy.

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Like this one:

formatting link

I believe it is fairly young for a shop machine, mid 90's. There's stuff out there that dates back to the days of 8" floppies.

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Regards, Joerg

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Reply to
Joerg

Unfortunately, XP is still the best version of windows for many uses. Lots of companies feel they don't have time to waste testing for compatibility with Win 7, or finding drivers for it, or re-training staff, or handling the support. It's better with the devil they know. Besides, Win 7 has no advantages over XP if you are actually /using/ the computer, rather than admiring the pretty clock on the desktop.

I had to install windows (XP and Win 7) on a couple of computers recently - it is often faster to install Windows from scratch than to start using a typical "pre-installed" system (after it takes ages to install windows from a hidden partition, you then have to waste more time removing all traces of the "demo" and time-limited junk that comes with system). While Win 7 installation is mildly improved over XP, it's still seriously inefficient. And once you have the basic system installed, you then have to find and install the drivers - which are often totally absurd (I had to download a 100 MB file for an Ethernet driver, including it's useless utilities - and it wouldn't even install until I'd added dotnet runtimes!).

The Windows developers really should get hold of a few Linux distributions to see how OS installers /should/ be made - they have a decade or so catching up to do.

Reply to
David Brown

In fact sweet f*ck all of them do.

Pure fantasy.

In fact sweet f*ck all of them are actually used anymore.

Even sillier.

Even sillier.

Because floppys are so unreliable, stupid.

falling over."

Doesnt happen with floppys that fall over all the time.

Reply to
Rod Speed

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