A new floppy drive able to store 36Mb on one standard floppy?

[Kwad Guy]

I just noticed a blurb in the latest PC World (which
means this news is ages old, probably) that supposedly
there is a new floppy drive available (or available
soon) that is able to store 36Mb on a single standard
2HD floppy?

Does anyone have more info on this? How fast can it write
/ read? This sounds too good to be true...

Kwad

 

[stultus]

Link to PC World story.

 

[Gunbuster]

I dont trust a floppy disk to hold 1.44

36mb is piddly anyway, 100mb zip is small, even CDR's are getting small

 

[duragezic]

Yes I think this was posted a couple of months ago. There was something about a floppy holding a lot more anyway.

I agree with Gunbuster though. What't the use of a 36mb disk? All I use floppies for now are to hold important text files or usually just to bring some typed stuff to school to use on their computers. The rest of my stuff I burn to cds. Zips are useless IMO. Cds are kinda getting small though. I have some snowboarding footage that I took off video camera that I'd like to be able to burn to cd (as computer file format) but it's 1.3gb. 🙂


arkaoss: Yeah I did convert them from mpeg-2 to divx format that reduced the size about half. That brought it down enough to fit on a cd but even when I converted to divx with quality maxed, it still didn't seem to look as good as the mpeg-2's. If I was really pressed for space I could convert to divx and burn to cd though.

 

[ArkAoss]

eagle__2 ask around here, I recorded a snake eating a rat, and it came out as 900mb, but someone suggested some file converters here, and i got it compressed to like 80mb, no resolution lost, or frames.

 

[esung]

I'm not sure if this is the same company, but maybe 4-5 years ago at Comdex there's a company is already demostrate the technology that can use a standard floppy/media to record upto 28MB. (that's when everyone is battling for the next gen floppy, which at this moment there's still no clear winner)

I still like the idea for a higher density floppy drive, because right now 1.44MB just can't cut it, even with compression. a lot of drivers will need multiple floppies to carry about, so does Virus definition files. or even pictures.. we have smartmedia and compact flash that's started at 4MB to 128MB or more already.. time to get the floppy's capacity up. (there's still need for disposable media here..
those flash memory are costing too much)

 

[wyvrn]

I could see uses for those floppy drives, esp. for drivers and things like that which waste cd space. But a cd is less succeptible to magnetism, the one really bad thing with floppies.

 

[Noriaki]

The only reason I still have a floppy in my system is because of it's universal compatibility. Any computer anywhere will have a floppy disk. If you make a new floppy with 36MB or 28MB or whatever, it won't be as fully compatible.

An LS120 drive can use regular floppies to, but a regular floppy drive can't use LS-120 disks.

Unless a regular floppy can read one of these 36MB disks it's usless...

I think we just needs CD drives with an RW speed of like 40x and a standardized packet format. Then we can really use CDRWs like "big floppies" (I use a Zip drive now becuase it's write speed is sooo much higher than my CDRW at 8x...but if I could get a packet CD with a high RW speed, I'd toss the zip).

 

[esung]

if you standardize the new floppy standard, and deploy it in the MB chipset(plus OS native support), which will become universal a few years down the road. and of course, make them as cheap as possible to be accepted (which is the main problem now, everyone wants patent and loyalties for their product, which I guess is why that none of them succeed.) I was hoping for a high capacity FDD that could utilize the FDD interface, but I think the interface needs to be revamped as well. since all the new systems were using IDE (I think HiFD uses both.. but I'm not too sure).

 

[BD2003]

Floppies are going the way of the dinsaur. PC makers are already doing away with ISA slots, and the floppy is on the ISA bus....