floppy disks?

[Eastward Bound]

Are floppy disks now officially outmoded technology? Now days every
computer has a USB port where you can insert one of those flash cards
that can store a lot more information than a floppy disk and it does
so more rapidly.

How safe are those flashcards? What is the capacity? When I ask how
safe I mean how reliable are they - that you won't have to worry about
any information getting lost? How in the world do they store
information anyhow without having electricty constantly sent through
them? If you drop them on the ground by accident couldn't that reset
the memory?

 

[Ken Wickes [MSFT]]

I think a lot of people overestimated floppy disks. In my experience more
people have lost data from floppies than anything else.

I've never heard of data loss from the flash cards, but of course that
doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

 

[SleeperMan]

Are floppy disks now officially outmoded technology? Now days every
computer has a USB port where you can insert one of those flash cards
that can store a lot more information than a floppy disk and it does
so more rapidly.

How safe are those flashcards? What is the capacity? When I ask how
safe I mean how reliable are they - that you won't have to worry about
any information getting lost? How in the world do they store
information anyhow without having electricty constantly sent through
them? If you drop them on the ground by accident couldn't that reset
the memory?

Did you ever try to carry data on the floppy to your friend? When you get
there, insert floppy, "try" to read it and you get access error... then you
take it out and throw it into brick wall...
Flashcards are waaaay more secure, although you can read that (especially in
digital cameras) they can fail, but then usually because of bad or wrong
formatting - because camera can use different format style than PC. I would
say they are even more secure than CDR.
Capacity? from very small (16M) to 2G, even 4G, but that ones are bloddy
expensive - you caould get very decent PC for their price. I think normal
choice is 128 M or 256M. Dropping normally doesn't hurt, unless you drop it
from a few miles high (a plane or a space shuttle), which can result in
breaking the chip. Look at celular phones - you drop it, pick it up and go
on...

 

[Eastward Bound]

Did you ever try to carry data on the floppy to your friend? When you get
there, insert floppy, "try" to read it and you get access error... then you
take it out and throw it into brick wall...
Flashcards are waaaay more secure, although you can read that (especially in
digital cameras) they can fail, but then usually because of bad or wrong
formatting - because camera can use different format style than PC. I would
say they are even more secure than CDR.
Capacity? from very small (16M) to 2G, even 4G, but that ones are bloddy
expensive - you caould get very decent PC for their price. I think normal
choice is 128 M or 256M. Dropping normally doesn't hurt, unless you drop it
from a few miles high (a plane or a space shuttle), which can result in
breaking the chip. Look at celular phones - you drop it, pick it up and go
on...

None of you answered my question.

And no, a floppy disc can last forever so long as you keep in in room
temperature, away from magnets and from contamination.

The flash cards are new, unproven technology.

 

[SleeperMan]

None of you answered my question.

Which part ?

I don't think they are totally outmoded yet. Many people still use floppies.
They are still widely available. When they'll become past, you won't be able
to buy them. then you'll know that they are out. Remember it's far quicker
to put 1 M or less file on a floppy than burn it on CDR. Also ALL PC's still
do have floppy drives. A bit outmoded, of course, but not useless. Note
that, say, Pentium I 133 is very outmoded, but some still have it in their
machines. It's quite good for writing letters...
Second - not all computers have USB port. All newer yes, but there are still
many older PC's without it.
Third, in flashcard is same type of memory as in digital cameras and both
exists on the market for quite a while (especially cameras), so i don't
think flashcards are unproven technology. From beginning there were vewry
few reports of failure. Far less than for CDR, for example.
I never heard of any card loose it's memory by falling down - if it breaks
yes, but not just from simple shock.

How do people store data? HDD's, tape drives, CDR's, DVD's, floppies,
optical drives. Tons of different devices. It's not that important which
media, it's important to know that wise one always makes two or more equal
copies for backup. NO media is absolutely safe, so you never know. If you
choose HDD, you set up RAID array, which is still not safe against viruses,
so you backup on CDR or DVD, which can turn out bad some day, so you make 2
or 3 copies etc.

 

[Bob Willard]

I don't think they are totally outmoded yet. Many people still use floppies.
They are still widely available. When they'll become past, you won't be able
to buy them. then you'll know that they are out.

I agree that FDs are not dead, but they are dying. Many PCs on
the market no longer include a FD as standard; making a FD an
extra-cost option is a milestone on the trip to the grave.

 

[Parish]

I agree that FDs are not dead, but they are dying. Many PCs on
the market no longer include a FD as standard; making a FD an
extra-cost option is a milestone on the trip to the grave.

IME, the only thing a FD is needed for these days is flashing the BIOS
since you need raw DOS - that's the only thing I've used a FD for in the
last 2 or 3 years; in fact I built my new machine without a FD and just
borrowed one from another machine to flash the BIOS.

They may not even be needed for that soon, ISTR seeing a program from a
mobo maker (Asus?) that could flash the BIOS from Windows.

 

[SleeperMan]

IME, the only thing a FD is needed for these days is flashing the BIOS
since you need raw DOS - that's the only thing I've used a FD for in
the
last 2 or 3 years; in fact I built my new machine without a FD and
just borrowed one from another machine to flash the BIOS.

They may not even be needed for that soon, ISTR seeing a program from
a
mobo maker (Asus?) that could flash the BIOS from Windows.

I never flashed my BIOS from floppy. I always use Winflash utility - made
from Windows, also option to check out BIOS and re-flash if needed.