Weapon of choice?

Blitzkrieger

I read recently that Dell are going to drop floppy disk drives from their new PCs soon, and supply USB 'key' storage devices instead. It's been a long time since I've used a floppy for file transfer - it's just too small capacity. I generally use a CD-R (€.34) and throw it away when done.

Have to go now Will edit and finish later.

Woden

i still have to use floppy discs coz of college, a couple of computers in the lab aren't on the network and if i want to transfer work from them to home floppy is my only option it seems.

tman

same here, there's a lab full of pc's with cd-rw drives in college but the dumb schmucks havn't installed any kind of burning software.

i'd be totally screwed if it wasn't for rar.

i use udf formatted cdrw's for bringing stuff into college & down home, very handy.

Pimp Ninja

Personally I have a USB powered Zip 250 that I carry round with me, along woth my laptop.

I use it for copying files from PC's that I cant connect directly to.

The Zip Drive is automatically recognised under 2K and XP, not sure about ME and I know it's definately not recognised under 98, needs software install for this.

phaxx

I abandoned floppies two years ago, not had one in any of my machines since, totally useless things. You format a new one, put a file on it, walk down the hall and the computer you put it into asks if you want to format it... hopeless!

I bought a 64mb usb pen drive thingy from komplett a week ago, fantastic thing! Have even installed a copy of Opera and various little games on it, put it on my keyring.

Gerry

floppies are utterly unreliable, slow and annoying, and I tear my hair out in college, because of the amount of people who still use them. Our machines do not have cdrw drives, but most people only want to bring some work home, not a movie. So unless your computer at home has no internet access, theres no need to use floppies. Absolutely inexcusable is people using floppies to bring work from one college machine to another. For example in one subject different people from the classhave to give presentations every week. Everyone seems to use floppy disks, instead of just using the college network, and storing the presentation on a web server.
Fair play to dell for dropping them.

Ruu_Old

they dont make floppy disks like they used to. they always end up broken someway (if the file or whatevers on it wont work, it ends up smashed by me )

Repli

Originally posted by Gerry
Absolutely inexcusable is people using floppies to bring work from one college machine to another. For example in one subject different people from the classhave to give presentations every week. Everyone seems to use floppy disks, instead of just using the college network, and storing the presentation on a web server.
Fair play to dell for dropping them.

I still use them for bringing in college assignments to print out or work on.. mainly because 1) It's quicker and easier to bring in a 2mb file on 2 floppies than upload it to the web at home, then keep downloading it again in college ( with risk of the web server goin down, you're screwed ) and 2) they're smaller than cds and it's quicker to put stuff on them than burn a cd every time and 3) I don't have a zip drive :P (and good quality floppies never let you down)

Inspector Gadget

Originally posted by Gerry
floppies are utterly unreliable, slow and annoying, and I tear my hair out in college, because of the amount of people who still use them. Our machines do not have cdrw drives, but most people only want to bring some work home, not a movie. So unless your computer at home has no internet access, theres no need to use floppies. Absolutely inexcusable is people using floppies to bring work from one college machine to another. For example in one subject different people from the classhave to give presentations every week. Everyone seems to use floppy disks, instead of just using the college network, and storing the presentation on a web server.
Fair play to dell for dropping them.

It sounds awful corny to say it, but while it's not true of much in the computing industry, apart from the aforementioned floppy disks and perhaps keyboards, but as it's relevant here I'll say it:

They sure as [expletive] don't make 'em like they used to.

Ten years ago I was able to carry floppies round for weeks at a time, in a shirt pocket or a bag, without a protective box or anything like that, and expect them to work - and, what's more, they did, for the most part. These days, I'm wary of them as soon as I've used them once, as they seem to attract dust like a planet-sized hoover bolted onto a Van Da Graaf generator.

I just don't know- maybe I'm getting old and nostalgic for the "good old days" when even 3-1/2" floppies were considered fancy - some less technologically inclined people even used to call them "hard disks" as they were harder to bend than the 5-1/4" ones?

Gadget

rob1891

Originally posted by Gerry
floppies are utterly unreliable, slow and annoying, and I tear my hair out in college, because of the amount of people who still use them. Our machines do not have cdrw drives, but most people only want to bring some work home, not a movie. So unless your computer at home has no internet access, theres no need to use floppies. Absolutely inexcusable is people using floppies to bring work from one college machine to another. For example in one subject different people from the classhave to give presentations every week. Everyone seems to use floppy disks, instead of just using the college network, and storing the presentation on a web server.
Fair play to dell for dropping them.

Rely on the college network and it will be your DOOM! I wouldn't trust it with my kitten porn. Yes, "the network is down" is a great excuse for not having your assignment in/done, but it also makes you look like soiled underware when your lab partner/whatever hands up a shining new printout straight off his floppy (okay, it doesn't if there are 50 of you going "waaaaa" but pffff (the air goes out of robs argument)).

Floppy disks are total unreliable if you treat them like ****. Keep them in a box and they'll be grand. We have disks nearing ten years old .... okay I haven't looked at them recently, but they were definitely readable 3 years ago ... that's still 7 years :P The real problem with floppies is the substandard floppy drives that are going into new computers.

You also neglect to realise that most people don't give a **** about computers, they are a tool to be used, and the floppy is simple and does it's job pretty well. Why take the time to learn how to ftp file to a webserver through a proxy (or sign up to free space or whatever you have in mind) when you can just use a floppy.

The best thing about floppies is they are free, all those stoopid first years leaving them around the place BEGGING to be lifted

Inspector Gadget

Originally posted by rob1891
Rely on the college network and it will be your DOOM! I wouldn't trust it with my kitten porn. Yes, "the network is down" is a great excuse for not having your assignment in/done, but it also makes you look like soiled underware when your lab partner/whatever hands up a shining new printout straight off his floppy (okay, it doesn't if there are 50 of you going "waaaaa" but pffff (the air goes out of robs argument)).

Been there, done that, burned that t-shirt in disgust...

Originally posted by rob1891
Floppy disks are total unreliable if you treat them like ****. Keep them in a box and they'll be grand. We have disks nearing ten years old .... okay I haven't looked at them recently, but they were definitely readable 3 years ago ... that's still 7 years :P The real problem with floppies is the substandard floppy drives that are going into new computers.

True - but remember that floppies are quite susceptible to mould, so you'd want to check in on them and make sure they're in a cool, dry place out of sunlight...

Gadget

Gerry

Originally posted by Inspector Gadget
It sounds awful corny to say it, but while it's not true of much in the computing industry, apart from the aforementioned floppy disks and perhaps keyboards, but as it's relevant here I'll say it:

They sure as [expletive] don't make 'em like they used to.

Ten years ago I was able to carry floppies round for weeks at a time, in a shirt pocket or a bag, without a protective box or anything like that, and expect them to work - and, what's more, they did, for the most part. These days, I'm wary of them as soon as I've used them once, as they seem to attract dust like a planet-sized hoover bolted onto a Van Da Graaf generator.

Gadget

I'd agree, I got a disk from my cousin in 1991 ( I think ) and it still worked 10 years later, dunno where it is now though. These days I try never to use them for reasons I've already stated. Its strange to have such an unreliable college network. While servers on our network ( in maynooth ) take a while to come back after a power failure, and the external connect goes every so often ( not so often these days ), I can't remember ever not being able to access internal servers, apart from power cuts.

Originally posted by rob1891
You also neglect to realise that most people don't give a **** about computers, they are a tool to be used, and the floppy is simple and does it's job pretty well. Why take the time to learn how to ftp file to a webserver through a proxy (or sign up to free space or whatever you have in mind) when you can just use a floppy.

Fair enough if most people want to do that.
I do computer science, and what you say is unfortunately true for a lot of my fellow students. They don't give a crap, they aren't interested, they don't want to learn how to ftp files or whatever. They ****ing should be interested, otherwise they shouldn't be doing computer science. They complain very loudly when the floppy disk holding their entire project stops working.

Capt'n Midnight

Floppy still has it's uses -
if you know how to boot from a USB memory stick please tell me...
ever try to restore files from a ten year old tape ?

Chances are if you have a text document on a 1.44 floppy it can be read and edited on 99% of all PC's (and Mac's and Amiga's) - you can even have a bootable PDA program on a floppy - cheaper than an ipaq

Of course because a stepper motor is used to move the head, the real killer with floppies is that a floppy disk fomatted in one misaligned drive might be readable in a normal drive, but not one that is misaligned a quater step the other way
Data is not backed up on a floppy - if it is duplicated on two or three in different places then it's lookig better.

BTW: count yourselves lucky - back in the early days of personal computers there were about 50 different formats for a 5 1/4" depending on which computer / os you used. BBC's could squeeze 180K on to one (hey don't laugh - that's as much as used to fit on the 8" floppies - and they were floppy!)- but could only save files in contigious free space - 100K free and you still can't save a 30K file

Mac's were the first to use 3.5" (cos they couldn't get any 5 1/4" in time) and have already dropped them...

'Course the old notebook drive in a USB adaptor is kinda neat - 40GB in a shirt pocket - [or 101,000 IBM XT floppies in old money]

Favorite floppy story is from when some of the lads were in the states - they asked one of the secetaries to send them some copies of the 5 1/4" floppies they had left behind. After they arrived (A4 format) there followed a long phone call about how to copy disks - this time not using photocopiers. Then the disks finally arrived - all neatly labelled and put in a ring binder for protection - they'd been hole punched...

ohh the days... when you'd open a machine and more likely than not there'd be a pile of 5 1/4" 's that had been slipped in under the drive - "File not found - press any key"

PS. anyone know where to get those small business card cdrw's ?

Blitzkrieger

Mmmm, can't edit the post after 2880 minutes apparantly

Anyway, some of you have already answered, but how do you prefer to transfer data.

Back in college, throwing it on the network's file server was pretty handy, and I used to see ads for similar systems on the Internet (i.e. you upload small files to their web site and retrieve them later), but it's mainly physical transfer I'm talking about.

Floppy (I remember when they really were floppy..) disks tend to be too small for my purposes. You can usually get a small document or a few pictures on them, but 1.4M is really too little. That they are so widespread is pretty handy.

Super-disks seem to have died out now. Several companies tried to make disks with higher capacities, and I remember one in particular with a 50MB capacity that was back-ward compatable, but I don't know anyone who actually bought one.

Zip drives seem to be popular with most of my RL friends. I don't really know much about capacities or transfer times cos I got CD-RW on my PC instead of it.

CD-R/RW is my own personal favorite. Burn a CD and it can be read in pretty much any machine, and 650MB of data is a reasonable chunk and should do for most purposes. Drives are cheap and media is cheap.

DVD-R/+R/-RW is something I've been considering. 4.2G (I think) of data is loads (atm) but the cost puts me off.

USB sticks/keys seem to be one of the best solutions around. They come in different capacities (32MB and 64MB are popular) I think up to 124MB, but what would worry me would be driver issues. I don't know if drivers come with XP now, but when they first came out you had to install drivers on every machine you wished to use them with. If you're carrying around a driver CD anyway......

Removable HDs are something I've been considering, but again the expense puts me off. They can be "internal", and slot into a 5.25" drive bay, or external and connect by firewire/USB. Capacities are as high as you want them to be and transfer times are good. If I was routinely transferring very large amounts of data, that's what I'd use.

Inspector Gadget

...ah, yes... nostalgia... anyone hear of the people who used to fold 5-1/4" disks to try to fit them into a 3-1/2" drive? :eek:

Or, for that matter, picking up a 5-1/2" or 8" disk to find you'd grabbed it by the window, smearing your data all the way to the bitstream in the sky :rolleyes:

(Who else memorised the PKZIP commands for creating disk-spanning archives?)

Oh yeah, Business Card CD-Rs (all of 30MB!):

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=28554&t=1777&l=3&AvdID=1&CatID=40&GrpID=18&s=pl

(E9.55 for a pack of 16)

Have fun... (hope your CD-burner supports 'em!)
Gadget

superfly

we had some gimp in here who put a buisiness card cd-r into a slot loading iMac :rolleyes:
fubarred the cd drive

Giblet

Actually, I use the network, and I upload to a webserver, and I use a floppy, triple ply protection.

elexes

in work i have to be honest i do use floppies .. but thats only when i need a boot disk i never will or intend to use one for any other use i myself got a 256 mb pen key and the others that work hear also have pen keys going from 16mb - 128 mb i know plenty of students using them now and they all seem to be working fine

i got one of those q tec usb caddies for a hdd and am using it . seems fine bit bulky but it is doing exactly what i wanted it to do . its auto detectable by win 2k xp and me and some linux distros

at home i think the only computer with a floppy is my laptop and ive networked that on the off chance that ill need to use it .

a while ago i was given a 3.5 disk by a guy doing some drawings of a building for my dad and i gave out to him when i saw a 3.5 disk comming my way asking him how in gods name was i ment to use that in this day and age then handed him a feather and asked him if he would get some ink and draw it out again

BigEejit

Back in the day we had a 14" floppy drive at work... with disks (same general look and feel as 5 1/4" but about 3 times the size ... the drive was serial port ...and for the older people here they will know that serial ports were s l o w before the 16550 fifos appeared on the scene...
And no I havent a clue what capacity they were ...

where i work now though we have one of the first 1Gig hard drives ...is about the size of a childs car seat and needs two to three people to lift it...:D ..those were the days when you could nearly feel the extra weight of your data on the HD.. :eek:

Now, I still use 3 1/2" floppys regularly enough, but mostly CD's (and on a computer at home I use bootable CD's for bios updates etc. because me floppy controller is fubar)

Woden

i have to say elexes you are convincing me to get one of those usb pen drives, could come in handy for college

elexes

if ur collage uses nt tho ur kinda screwed tho . lack of usb support .

a while back in work a guy brought in a "laptop" he said he wanted it to be repaired . i know i had a suitcase that this may of fitted into when i went on a 2 week holiday but it was huge . 15+ years old i estimated and was a ton i couldnt believe what i was seeing this thing was huge . twas a 286

naturaly i said i would not do any work on that computer

Woden

college uses win 98 and some of the non networked computers i use, use win 2k, there no problems using the pen drives on these is there?

it also means i could get really big files in college where the net is so quick compared to my 56k dial up. so tempting

Capt'n Midnight

Oh for the days when you could carry just one 360K floppy for your project - dos 2.11, wordstar, nu.exe, use sidekick to cut and paste and a game or two - and on boot up the whole lot got copied to C: {ramdrive}.
You can do a lot in 512KB of RAM without bloatware or multimedia.
{Come to think of it I actually upgraded one customers PC to 512KB - It came in with just 256KB.. }

Actually I used to carry two disks...
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article09-122
"I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard."
For those without a classical education it's the same tempo as the poem in the Simpsons halloween epsiode where Bart was a Raven in Homers gothic mansion...

BTW:
I can remember seeing a (HP?) minicomputer with External 250MB drives. - they looked like top loading washing machines - same size etc...

Praetorian

I use my USB2 hard drive (old laptop hard drive) or CD blanks (they cost sfa) or DVD blanks (they only cost 60 cent). I also have an internal zip 250 which I never use Nobody else has them!

I only resort to a floppy when repairing a pc's OS / flashing a bios etc etc

I think ZIP250 (or higher) should be the standard. Although it can be quite awkward (and sometimes impossible) to make them bootable

Blitzkrieger

Originally posted by Dataisgod
it also means i could get really big files in college where the net is so quick compared to my 56k dial up. so tempting

The college won't like that. They hate people hogging the bandwidth. 5,000 students either surfing or in chat rooms but they'll single you out as hogging bandwidth. Not like they give a toss, but their donkey pron download might be slowed down.

sceptre

Originally posted by elexes
if ur collage uses nt tho ur kinda screwed tho . lack of usb support .

<cough>
SP6a

elexes

Originally posted by sceptre
<cough>
SP6a

* cough* lack of teckys that update

Woden

ah downloads from college wouldn't take long, even if i had a 512mb pen drive, that type of file size would download in college in a few minutes and i have to say i couldn't give a f**k about blocking the college bandwidth coz they never do a thing about all the people playing lan games and blocking up the computers and bandwidth.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

elexes

data u know a place to store 256 megs on data on the net for free ? and a way to upload it as quick as it is to transfer from the desktop to the pendrive ?

phaxx

Originally posted by elexes
and a way to upload it as quick as it is to transfer from the desktop to the pendrive ?

Not asking for much, are you? How deep is your wallet?

echomadman

Pen drives are the business, most of em are driverless in 2k and XP

as for floppys
http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm

Slutmonkey57b

i have to say i couldn't give a f**k about blocking the college bandwidth coz they never do a thing about all the people playing lan games and blocking up the computers andbandwidth.

Nothing worse than damn students clamming up a college lab doing work when you're trying to have a LAN I say. Bleedin' students.

Woden

"data u know a place to store 256 megs on data on the net for free ? and a way to upload it as quick as it is to transfer from the desktop to the pendrive ?"

eh no but that was my point that the pendrive would be so handy and useful for large file transfer from college to save me time and money at home?

"Nothing worse than damn students clamming up a college lab doing work when you're trying to have a LAN I say. Bleedin' students."

i'm telling ya one day i come into college and can't get a computer coz of a LAN i'm just gonna walk up and unplug em on ya's . Perhaps i'm just pissed though and don't know how to get into the games nor have the free time to play them

elexes

a right mis read post . er. sorry

Woden

no bother its all good.

Sarky

I still have most of the floppies that came with my Amiga500 nearly 15 years ago. They still work perfectly(A quick game of North and South or Flimbo's Quest does wonders for stress...). The floppies made today are nowhere near as robust, they'll come apart at the seams first chance they get.

po0k

Originally posted by echomadman
as for floppys
http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm

That rocks...and seems to be RAID5

BigEejit

For all of you who are throwing those floppy drives in the bin you may want to look at the following link on toms hardware guide ... basically if you want to raid up your two s-ata channels on the newest i875 type boards you MUST have a floppy drive for the driver...
Mmmmm the specs on those boards are tasty ... cant wait until the get available/affordable

Capt'n Midnight

Floppy Disk Mod - http://chaz6.com/enterprise/ - from yellum

But FDD's are handy for linux routers & firewalls
http://leaf.sourceforge.net/mod.php?mod=userpage&menu=904&page_id=21
Also in http://www.midwestwan.org/ click on Me1000

If you can boot your machine from a CD then knoppix is much better - though you can save your config on a floppy ( and you can also zip the empty swap and user areas to fit on the same disk too so you can unzip them onto FAT32 ) http://www.knoppix.net/ & ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/download.linuxtag.net/knoppix/

elexes

used that os on some computers it crashed after about 30 secs each time . dono why just incompatibality with my hardware i guess