Sony Signals the End of the Floppy

[lockeslylcrit]

"Floppy" refers to the old 5.25 disk, not the 3.5. The 5.25 (of which I am very familiar with thanks to growing up on with an IBM, Apple IIgs, and a C64) were flimsy, hence the name "floppy disk".

 

[Billion Backs]

Noooooooooo...

I'll remember you, floppy, dammit, I will!

I still have a drive on my computer... Although I don't ever use it for obvious reasons.

Still, floppies are damn awesome.

I'll remember the floppy. I'll remember the entire box of them that I bought for the sake of storing pictures. I'll remember the first one I ever received as my own, and wrote on the label, "Please don't touch the metal peice" and my teacher reading it out loud, making me feel like an idiot, and thus never forgetting how to properly spell the word 'piece'. I'll remember the time I found some of the floppy discs my Dad had in a floppy container, finding a lot of awesome games and the first version of strip poker I ever played.

I'll remember. And I'll keep the floppy drive, as well.

I think I'm having even more awesome flashbacks. Punch. Cards. Fuck yeah.

I've inherited like 5 boxes of them from my parents - and my grandfather. They were mathematicians/ computer specialists back in the 70s and 80s and so on...

Damn, I wish I haven't wasted all of those cards. Who knows, maybe there was some kind of a secret program on them! Given that all of the above-mentioned people worked in a secret scientific facility in USSR at the time punch cards were used, it's not that unlikely.


... I bet it's tetris!

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Oh I remember when I had my transparent yellow Floppy disk in High school for all my homework. Then my dad bought me a Memory stick for my birthday. It's like going from a black and white to a HD colour TV. My first school still used those big 5.25" floppies (we're talking early/mid 90's here people) god they sucked.

EDIT: Vegeta! What does the Scouter say about his post count?!

 

[Tom Phoenix]

Floppies were an important medium in all my years of using a computer. They came in really handy when transfering school papers and used to be the only medium in which you could copy paste the content. That said, they had little storage space and were also awfully sensitive as to whether or not a certain computer (if any) could read the data from it.

So while there is plenty to be nostalgic about as far as diskettes are concerned, I was overall glad when I finally got a USB key to replace them. I might still utilise a floppy in case of an emergency, though.

 

[_Janny_]

My PC still has a floppy drive now that I think about it. It doesn't work anymore, but still. Yes, my computer is very, very old.

Goodbye dear floppies, you were awesome to use when I had projects at school.

 

[Julianking93]

I didn't even know they still made floppy disks...

 

[tkioz]

I remember fondly (not) trying to talk people out of the floppy while I was working at a local computer store, of course we had one sitting in the back that we could jack into machines if we needed to get it running memtest or something like that, but we hated the damn things otherwise, but oh no, mums and dads wanted the floppy, didn't matter they had DVD burners, they wanted their floppys, in the end we just gave up, there was a +$15 on all the price lists for floppy drivers just under the +$X for a bigger hard drive.

I almost popped a blood vessel once installing Windows XP on a new high end machine with a SATA raid setup, only to discover I needed to cram a floppy in there some where to get the drivers on... Thank god Windows 7 and (I think) Vista didn't need that dreck.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

I actually had a few 5.25 inch ones as well...

I remember the time when you'd make a system restore floppy for your Windows, label it "system diskette" and feel all important... But that might have also been because back then, I was a kid who thought that an ability to operate MS-DOS was hyperadvanced computer science.

 

[HK_01]

I remember that great game where you were stranded on an island and had to survive on your own somehow. It had lots of cool stuff in it and could fit on just one floppy disc.

 

[FolkLikePanda]

Man I remember my first Floppy Disc...

 

[zHellas]

My PC still has one. Of course, my PC was bought in 2001, so there you go.

How has it lasted so long?!?!

 

[Soxafloppin]

My computer doesnt even have a floppy disk drive!

Usb sticks for the win!

 

[oppp7]

Aw, I liked floppy discs...
I still have some to fill with stuff though.

 

[Gastronucci]

I was a kid who thought that an ability to operate MS-DOS was hyperadvanced computer science.

It is now

 

[Good morning blues]

When I was in elementary school, each kid had a single 3 1/2 inch floppy that had our name on it and stored all of our computer class files. I remember thinking it was really cool since it was such a huge step up from my monochrome Apple IIe with a 5 1/2 inch floppy drive at home.

 

[Flour]

I thought floppy's died when cd's and USB drives started being used.

They nearly did but some people used them for silly things like this:

Spoiler

 

[Ironic Pirate]

At least I still have my eight track!



[sub]Right?[/sub]

 

[manythings]

Well the way it was explained to me is that the floppy drive never changed in the same way as the CD/DVD drive so it was impossible to interfere with a Floppy drive remotely but with the right programmes and such you could interfere with a CD/DVD drive. It's wholly possible I misunderstood what I was being told though I am no computer officionado.

 

[Plinglebob]

I refuse to get rid of my a:\ drive as it would feel like I'm betraying my PC history. I remember fondly swapping shareware, freeware and other games between friends on floppys. The problem is there still hasn't been a decent alternative thought up. CDs/DVDs are cheap enough and flash memory is dropping in price, but using a disk that can store 4.8Gb to store a 500kb word file and not being able to delete it seems a waste. Also, CD/DVDs scratch easily, flash drives get broken but floppys were almost indestructable and easy to repair.

Also, hsan't the floppy disk been "dying" for over 10 years now? I think its been declared dead more often than PC gaming.

EDIT:

I thought floppy's died when cd's and USB drives started being used.

They nearly did but some people used them for silly things like this:

Spoiler

Ok, thats FANTASTIC! I want!

 

[Doom moose]

sad to see it go although flopys tended to corrupt easily but they will go down in history with vido tapes as the some of the milestones in data storage that are now obsolite