What do people have against floppy's?

darcy · Post by **darcy** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 11:37 pm

Originally posted by nexus_7
I keep an external usb floppy and thats that.

Greg

same here. i used it a grand total o' once to flash my BIOS.

Walleye · Post by **Walleye** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 12:24 am

very little storage
dies quickly
susceptable very easily to magnets and electric fields.
flimsy.

vs any other mainstream storage.

flash drives: lots of storage, durable, portable.

zip drives: lots of storage, durable, never die.

CD's: Lots of storage, durable (to a degree), not susceptable to magnets or anything.

Why use floppies again?

if it can come on a floppy drive, why not move it to a CD-ROM and bask in the much better-ness.

besides, memtest can go on a CD-ROM. In fact, i have one.

Busby · Post by **Busby** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 12:54 am

Originally posted by VidmanII
When you guyz can tell me how to run Norton Ghost without a floppy, maybe I'll get rid of it.

For all I know maybe you can !

In the meantime, that prog is a lifesaver for me as a backup tool in that I have 4 HDD's w/ 8 partitions running on 3 different controllers and I don't like to lose ANYTHING !

It's actually quite easy.

http://www.nu2.nu/mkbt/ and download that program. Create a BIN file and then tell Nero to use the BIN file as a bootable CD. Or just have the disk in the drive and tell Nero to use the bootdisk in the floppy and it will burn a bootable CD

VidmanII · Post by **VidmanII** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 1:46 pm

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Tue Jun 08, 2004 4:45 am

Or just have the disk in the drive and tell Nero to use the bootdisk in the floppy and it will burn a bootable CD

Hmm, so ok, if you don't have the floppy drive to put that boot disk then where do you tell nero to look?

Actually I think the reason I hate floppies is garbage quality of new floppies! I have some old 720k floppies and early generic 1.44 floppies from around 1988 or 89. Those STILL WORK, I have disks I bought 3 months ago and they have problems??

Truely, I bought 100 generic floppies (720k I think) back when I first got into computers around 1988 or 1989. I had alot of those unused and still new about 1991 or 1992 and I scanned an entire 300 page color catalog of products, cut the pics and item discription out for each product and saved them to those old/new floppies, plus some extras I bought then, about 75-90 disks total. About 2 months ago I wanted one of those pics, and yes the disk still worked without any error! Needless to say this was not the same drive or system that wrote that disk. I tested a few of them and they all read fine.

The other day I was at the office and needed a small file from another persons system, they stuck it on a floppy for me and I could not use it, gave it back to them and they could not use it either and we both ended up getting "disk is not formatted" errors. That was one of those junk colored see through Floppies, I have had alot of problems with new floppies like that and with lots of systems, not just one.
It's like after you expose them to air for several days/weeks they up and die. Maybe Disney made those as a prototype for their great disposable DVDs that flopped so bad.

In any case, most programs are such memory and space hogs not alot fits a floppy so I have a usb thumb drive for transporting stuff now. But if floppies were reliable I would still use them more often, but I can't save a file at the office just to find out the floppie don't work when I get home. Cd's are such a pain when you only need a little text file or two!

In the old days even the cheap generic floppies were reliable and lasted (my 1988 disks), I suppose if you search out high quality disks they are out there, after all not that long ago I was getting drivers on floppies still for stuff like network cards. And I just bought something not long ago I got another floppie, and those ones still seem to last. Any I have bought in the last few years seem to have a 50/50 chance of working when I get one out to use now.

blackhawk · Post by **blackhawk** » Sat Jun 19, 2004 7:43 pm

My Kingston usb memory key has taken over most of the previous floppy uses although I still have floppies in all my family machines. Kids are starting to take to my "geek necklace" now.

Floppies die young, dont always work in other drives and dont hold enough.