Cool new LS-240 drive that uses 240 MB disks and reformats standard floppies to 32 MB's !

[Krakn3Dfx]

Cool, now I can lose 32MB of important data on a crappy, unreliable floppy instead of the normal 1.44MB of important data!

 

[Fritzo]

<< cool, just read the specs, and it does support ls-120 disks. I love the ls-120 drives. They read floppy disks about 10 times faster than a regular floppy drive. They read and write ls disks at a very fast rate, comparable to that of an internal zip drive.

External zip drives, in my experience, are way to slow.

I've had an ls-120 drive for about 4 years now, and am surprised that not many people have them at all. I thought by now, no computers would have the floppy controller at all, and we would all have the ide ls drives to do the floppy disk support. I was wrong. At least this ls-240 shines a new light of hope on such a promising product. >>



The LS-120's were great, but they came out at the same time as CD-RW drives. Guess who won

 

[Mage]

If you format those floppies to 32 MB (assuming it's possible in the first place), those floppies wouldn't be read by normal floppy drives...so all you can do is backup stuff for yourself. (And on floppies, ick.)

Zip/floppies are obsolete, slow copying and expensive media. Cd burning all the way.

 

[dajeepster]

Could everyone please stop refering to the ability of a floppy to hold data by it's physical size. There are no electronic devices in a floppy. It's just a storage medium. The object that allows it to be written with 32mb of information is the drive itself, not the floppy. No matter what someone thinks about this, there is someone else out there trying to make it hold even more. Research and development does wonders for everyones imagination. At one time, a computer was as large as a house, and did alot less than the computers today. And now today you can have a computer that sits in the palm of your hand. Where your imagination takes you is where the new technology is. Just my 2 cents, and now i'm rammbling.

 

[SpideyCU]

In the CD vs. LS120 debate, I agree that CD burning wins out. It's not even worth discussing. But LS-120 drives own those freakin' Zip drives. I mean, c'mon, similarly-sized large disks, AND backwards compatability with floppies (for things like boot disks). Zip drives, like someone else mentioned, just had better marketing from Iomega. I for one enjoy disabling my FDD controller and just relying on IDE.

Removable media such as this still has its place. Want to install a patch or something that's about 50MB? Let's see...get a CD-R, start up the software, set it up, let the thing burn and burn, then take it to your friend's system down the street (let's assume you don't both have broadband so transferring it isn't an option). Or, grab an LS-120 disk, drag &amp; drop the contents, and GO.

I'm in no way saying that LS-120's or these new 240's will replace or even in the slightest way threaten CDRs. It's just another media and the LS-120's are a lot more reliable than the old-fashioned floppies, but it's nice to have backwards compatability when you need it. Though if you need another LS-240 drive to read the new 32MB floppies, why one wouldn't just use the 240MB disk is beyond me...

 

[straubs]

How anyone is still able to sell a Zip drive is beyond me... I work in an IT dept. My PC there has a zip drive and I've used it once in 6 months. I can put stuff on a CD and use it anywhere in the company. I can put stuff on zip and uh, carry a zip drive around with me and install iomega software on every PC? Hmmm.

-You say your floppies are disposable? Well so are my free CD-R's.

-Backing up at less than 250mb at a time on expensive media? May I ask why you would want to do this? I have zip files bigger than that! OK, drag &amp; drop is easier for the completely computer illiterate...but how often do you see these people actually backing up their files? Most of them don't even run virus scanners!

 

[SpideyCU]

LOL, show me someone who actually uses 250MB disks for backups of their important data and I'll show you someone who's not long for this world...this I've gotta see!



<< And also will the 240 superdisk works on the LS120 drive? If not it's going to kill it even more. >>



It's a nice little bonus if hardware is backwards compatible...I really don't think you'll find much of any hardware that's, uh, forward compatible.

 

[xlxlxl]

Before this baby drop below $100 each, + disks < $3 each, I do not believe they will get any considerable amount of market.

This is nothing more than a toy, compare to usibility of CD writers.

 

[xlxlxl]

BTW, it wont be more than 2 years before we see these babies showing up in overstock for $30 each ...
LOL...

 

[riznick]

The LS drive is an awesome luxury. It reads regular Floppy Disks. Hence, no need for a floppy drive. It also reads floppies like 10 times faster than regular floppy drives. CD burners do not read floppy disks. The LS is very nice when doing installs, or using floppy boot disks. LS has been around for a very long time, and it is very reliable.

It is a little bit too pricy though. I do not think this luxury is worth more than 100 bones.

Zip should never have won the battle. Zip has had lots more problems, and they dont support regular floppy disks. Many of my friends got Zip drives cuz all the college computers had zip drives. Before DSL, it was very common for people to go to school to download stuff, and bring it home on a zip disk.

 

[jklesel]

ive actually had really bad luck with ls-120 drives. i tested them compared to a regular floppy drive on identical machines. to transfer a 1.2mb file, the ls120 took 1:15 while the standard floppy only took 30 seconds. i used a standard floppy disk for the test. i might have the first version of the ls-120, so that could be the problem. just thought someone out there might like to know my findings. IMHO, if you use ls120's or 240's your just complicating things.

 

[SpideyCU]

Sorry, I claim the exact reverse: with LS-120's (IDE version anyway) you get to simplify things. My transfer speeds are always much better with my LS-120 than with my floppy drive (I might do some tests of my own to verify this with concrete numbers), and I have the luxury of disabling the FDD controller in my BIOS and not ever worrying about it. Either it is an early version that you got, as you said, or there's something physically wrong with your drive, or something isn't set correctly in your BIOS (sometimes people forget to set drive A: as &quot;none&quot; rather than 1.44 floppy) because my SuperDisk drive has been a great thing to have around. I promised myself I wouldn't post anything more here because I tend to rant (look how long that promise lasted), but I had to say that because between my system, my sister's, my dad's, and his laptop, LS-120 drives have been a great help to moving files between the systems.

riznick, I concur. My school's systems didn't have burners in 'em.