floppy disks.

Post Reply New Topic

It seems like they're not so common anymore. I remember them back in the day.

Funny how CDs can bend more than a "floppy" disk can before it becomes unusable.

I can remember using the old-style larger floppy disks which were actually 'floppy' (which I would think is where the name comes from) when I was at school!

The reason is that they just don't have the data storage capacity required by today's software. Even CDs are starting to become obsolete because of the needs of today's computers.

The first floppy disks I used, in 1978, were somewhat flexible or "floppy" and were 8 inches square. Later there were 5-inch floppies. The little rigid 3-1/2 inch ones didn't appear until the 90s, IIRC.

Nobody uses them. Portable flash drives can now easily hold 64GB of data, whereas Floppy disks can hold a couple of hundred megabytes. If you want even more storage external hard-drives are now cheap enough for 3 Terabytes, and small enough to put in a bag and take somewhere. By the way, 3TB is approximately 4000 times more storage then the capacity of a Floppy Disk, and probably less then 100x as expensive.

Today, 1.4 MB is almost nothing. Also, I remember those things got easily corrupted. They were quite important in my early school years though.

Ah yes, the good old days.
I worked in a government office back then (1994) and we would go around, handing off a floppy to someone else saying "here are those docs you wanted." And we felt so "with it." We were "cutting edge." I remember thinking "these little things really hold a lot of data."
Still have a boxful in my computer closet.

It's a minute-and-a-half long mp3 file at 128kbps. Nothing at all.

I can even go back further than the large floppies which I still have some around here. When I first got into computing in 1982 I used a tape recorder for my storage. Back then there were no floppy drives, CDrom drives or hard drives.

I remember them as a child and teen. I remember the days when you had to use them to instal a program. Now I don't know what people do different now. I think they use a CD now and they burn the file to it. I also remember the bendable ones and yuo also had to use those to install a program and CD roms slowly replaced them.

But I have hated floppy disks in my teens because mine always got corrupted and had to be reformatted and I lose everything. I had a box of them and I got rid of them.

Ah yes, back in the days were PC games would come in big boxes loaded with multiple floppy disks. I wish PC games still game in those big boxes, some of the content included were like the things you would get in an over priced collectors edition nowadays. From 1.4mb floppys to 25gb blu ray discs, how times have changed.

Pfft! When I was a lad we used to backup data from our abacus onto clay tiles! We thought it was a great innovation when someone invented paper and ink!

Being serious, I too remember the days of 8 1/2 inch, 5 1/4 inch and 3 1/5 inch disks and prior to that tape. In fact tape lasted a long time due to its high capacity, the reel sizes went down though from around 10 inch diameter to micro-cassettes. When I worked as a mainframe computer operator I routinely had to carry huge removable disk platters to the fire-safe for storage. Could only carry one in each hand due to their size.

They sure come along ways to make computer components a lot smaller. When I was a security guard at the same place that the rat incident took place, I had to make sure that the computer room was at a certain temperature. This CPU took up the who darn room. And then there were computer set ups for each desk outside of this room. Those were even big and clunky. I have seen a few of those giant hard drives that was used in business. Did they have around 5 megabites or was it kilabites of hard disk space?

I remember that ! ! It was a big deal ! !!

My computer still has a floppy drive.

Perhaps it's time for an upgrade.