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Are Floppy Drives Obsolete?

M

mauiblue

Senior member
I read an article on the CNN website that floppy drives (3.5 in) are pretty much obsolete and some manufacturers like Dell don't include them on some of their machines. But I know that you do need these so called soon to be dinosaurs if you want to install controller drivers during Windows installation or for BIOS flashes. There are some software that is still distributed on floppies. I know that I wanted/needed a floppy drive for my computer. I even have an Iomega ZIP 250 because I still have quite a few Zip disks laying around. Just wondering how many other enthusiast have these types of comparable removable media and what alternatives are there when installing drivers during windows installation or flashing BIOS if a floppy drive is unavailable?

BTW, Bill Gates predicted in that article that CD/DVDs would be obsolete within ten years.
 
they're only obsolete if you don't have a use for them anymore. for me, parallel ports are obsolete.
 
I very rarely use my floppy drive, but when I do, it's usually for something mission-critical.

they're so cheap that there's really no reason not to include one unless you have something else you want to put in the bay... but even then, I wouldn't feel comfortable without at least a usb floppy drive somewhere in the house for emergencies.
 
I use my floppy to flash the BIOS, or do stuff like run "killdisk" to erase HD's. I haven't really given DOS bootable CD's a chance though in all fairness.
 
I don't have a floppy drive in either my desktop or my notebook. I've no use for them, owning a USB memory stick and a CD ISO with all the diagnostic utilities I could ever want.

IMO, 3.5in 1.44Mb floppies are obsolete, everything that they can do can be done with CDs. ZIP disks still have leave because of their storage capacity though.

I believe that we will definitely have a replacement for CD/DVDs in ten years, the BluRay disks are due out soon with storage capacites of 50+GBs. Given the sheet number of CDs and DVDs around though, you'll still seen CD and DVD drives for sale or the new drives will be backwards compatible.

Hehe, can you image a BluRay audio disk with a storage capacity of 50GB? 50 songs, 2 good ones, 50 dollar price tag. 😛
 
why? just wait until office max has those free cd r deals.

Its nice to have a floppy around for like the raid drivers when installing windows, other than that i dont really use it.
 
Originally posted by: Feep
why? just wait until office max has those free cd r deals.
Click to expand...

I don't know if I'll ever be able to get over the trauma of having to spend $2/CD back in the mid-90's 😉

plus, when dealing with a server that doesn't have a floppy or cd drive, it's a lot easier to hook up a usb floppy than a usb cd drive.
 
not until windows lets you search for drivers on a usb flash drive during installation. too bad they didn't do this with sp2. maybe they never will?
 
floppies are IMO the most important thing, usually when something critical happens to your PC, floppies are the only savior.
 
well i had a floppy till my sis's broke so i put mine in there, and i have a zip drive sitting in my closet that i dont use. the only time i used the floppy was for my sata drive. i think dvd and cds will be around for a while just because there isnt as much of a demand for a 50gig disk like there is for a cd.
 
I still keep a floppy around in all my PC's for 2 main reasons, Ghost and if something goes wrong it can usualy be fixed w/ something from a floppy + a large number of my diag tools are designed to only run from a floppy because they need to be able to write to the media they came from. Also if the bios is Fubar'd they only way you are getting it back is w/ a floppy or new bios chip.
 
Originally posted by: loki8481
Originally posted by: Feep
why? just wait until office max has those free cd r deals.
Click to expand...

I don't know if I'll ever be able to get over the trauma of having to spend $2/CD back in the mid-90's 😉

plus, when dealing with a server that doesn't have a floppy or cd drive, it's a lot easier to hook up a usb floppy than a usb cd drive.
Click to expand...

WHat about the days when 3.5 HD floppies cost $60 a box? Bought my first box from now OOB Egghead software back in 1988. I remember when the drive was $200 option.
 
I use my floppy for startup of partition copying. I copy one hd to another, weekly. I wouldn't be without a floppy drive.
 
completely yes..

with "modern" motherboards, a usb pen drive can now do everything that a floppy did, but better.

just my opinion
 
The only reasons I have a floppy drive are my brother needs floppies to shuttle papers back and forth from school and installing SATA drivers.
 
Floppy drives are my Savior, I rarely use it on my aging PIII, but when you got to use your computer, have only one rig, you got to reformatt your computer and have to do a report for school that is due the next day...definitely not obsolete.

I had to boot from a floppy to install, cause I couldnt find my recovery cd. Course I was a newbie....🙂

I bought a Networking adapter for my computer, guess what...drivers were on a floppy.

If I were to build a new comp, definitely would include a floppy drive. Cause you never know what could happen.

Cause my former school wont let u send or recieve email attachments and you need a floppy to transfer .doc files.

When you need it, you dont have it. That quote really applied to my situation above.

 
Floppies are obsolete for most people but the value of having one has never been so great. With the rising use of usb thumb drives and cd roms these days, many forget to realize that if you have a older comp, many of those devices will be useless until you are into windows. In a lot of cases machines won't load the os and on some computers, usb support is not native so your basically screwed with your usb thumb drive.

A floppy disk+ a boot disk was a must have,still is a must have and will countinue to be a must have.
 
Originally posted by: stickybytes
Floppies are obsolete for most people but the value of having one has never been so great. With the rising use of usb thumb drives and cd roms these days, many forget to realize that if you have a older comp, many of those devices will be useless until you are into windows. In a lot of cases machines won't load the os and on some computers, usb support is not native so your basically screwed with your usb thumb drive.

A floppy disk+ a boot disk was a must have,still is a must have and will countinue to be a must have.
Click to expand...

That's also my attitude about floppy disks and drives. I've not really kept up with the ever-changing technologies of PC's until I decided to build my own a few months ago. But when I read that article I felt that there must me more to this article so that's why I posted my question. I guess Dell doesn't put floppy drives as (stated on that article) on some of their machines because they provide those "restore disks" and the need for installing drivers from floppies is not necessary. That's my take on that issue.

BTW, here is the link to the article:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/p...ppydeath.ap/index.html
 
Its too bad floppies weren't replaced with something like Zip. I remember when Zip 100s were fairly popular long before the rise of CD burners. Sure would have been nice if a large majority of computers came standard with a zip drive but nothing seems to have caught on to replace floppies and no one stepped up to do so. Would have been nice in high school to have just needed 1 zip disk that could work in any computer instead of needing a floppy for just about any class that required a disc for saving computer work.

Floppies are obsolete, you really don't need them anymore unless you are working with older OSes/hardware/software, otherwise you can pretty much do anything floppies can with a CD, just kinda sucks though, because even CDRWs don't seem right as a media storage device you should be writing and rewriting to.
 
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