April 28, 2010

Bye Floppy Disks and Drives

[04/25/2010] Sony delivers floppy disk's last rites

Sony announced last Friday it will end the domestic sales of floppy discs in March 2011. Considering that Apple iMac eliminated the floppy completely in 1998, Dell dropped the floppy as standard equipment on one of its Dimension desktops in 2003, and I have not purchased floppy drives for all my desktops since 2000, I am a little surprised at this news - I thought it's gone already!

If you have never seen or used floppy disks before, or you just want to recollect your memory, here is some information about floppy disk from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk

Nonetheless, the news did make me think about the old days when using floppy disks. Here are some of the fun experience I can remember:
  • The MS-DOS (and PC-DOS) operating system was on 2 or 3 floppy disks (about 4MB).
  • I played this game called F-16 or something, which was on a single floppy disk. See it here on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pO88OZbxoA
  • I used to collect student work via floppy disks; and that's a 300 student big class.

Did you use these floppy disks before? What alternatives have you used?

20 comments:

Bianca N. said...

Wow. This post really caught my attention and was intersting to me because I thought that floppy disks were already eliminated for everyone. When i was younger my mother was a secretary and had to write reports and save them on floppy disks. We had tons of cases of disks in our house. My middle school teachers required that students had a floppy disk for each class. In 2006 we bought a new computer and I spent hours trying to find the floppy disk drive (ofcourse there was none). I'm still not even accustomed to using the USB things. I just save everything to my computer and email them to myself. (I know that's pretty old school).

David Youmans said...

It's a bit funny in the sense that I'm 35 years old and I remember playing that F-16 game as a kid on my Commadore 64 computer system in the early eighties. All my games were on 5 1/4" floppy disks that you had to cut a notch in the upper right hand corner to make it a double sided disk and ya had to be extremely careful with any magnets in the area. I guess i'm just glad that's it's at least taken this long to phase this medium of storage out. LOL

thephenomenal1 said...

Nitish Shaji, Tuesday Thursday Class 930am to 1045am

This blog is kind of funny to me. I dont even remember using floppy disks. I know they were around, because my dad used to have muliple different colored floppy disks just lying around the computer rooms. They are still there...somewhere, although I never seen my dad use them. I thought they were slowly weeded out of our daily lives, but apparently they still exist? I had no idea. Well the removal of floppy disks doesnt really effect me in any way, since I already thought they were gone. But ok, I guess it is official, floppy disks will be gone by next year. Might as well get rid of them not, not like its going to bug me or the rest of the world

Stephen said...

I've seen the vast excitement over the arrival of VHS tapes and the shrug that accompanied their demise. Plus: Betamax videocassettes, reels of recording tape, DAT tapes, audio cassettes, eight-track cartridges, and floppy disks. Now, Sony announced this week floppy disks are set to join the ranks of dead media. To be sure, it's hard to mourn something with such tiny capacity. My digital camera takes images that won't fit on a single floppy disk (which, by the way, held 1.4MB of data, not the 1.44MB beloved of marketers), and stores these on an 8GB card the size of a postage stamp. A floppy won't hold a single average-length song; it might just manage a book-length manuscript in today's bloated word-processing formats. But the disk was revolutionary in its day. It held double the amount of data of its predecessor, the 5.25in floppy, and at the time 1.4MB was a lot. Like social media now, it spawned media scares;

Erica Reynolds said...

I actually thought floppy disks were gone also. I, myself, have not used a floppy disk in over 12 years. None of the technology in my household even has a floppy disk drive. My mother is not so technology savvy, but even she has upgraded to a jump drive. I think it is pretty cool that Sony didn't upgrade so fast though because everyone doesn't move at the same pace. Sony gave people a chance to upgrade from floppy disks when they were ready.

Erica Reynolds

Joshua Yong said...

This post really brought back memories of when I used to use floppy disks a lot. It was the main way for me to store data. I used to even have color coded floppy disks. But when usb flash drives started coming out, I stopped using floppy disks. But I remember I started to transition out of floppy disks when I started using email. This is because I started to use the attachment feature of email and email myself the data. I thought that floppy disks were already discontinued but knowing that it really will be in 2011 shows a lot of how technology improved over the past years.

SaraThompson said...

I remember when we first got a computer in the early 1990's and my mom and dad had this huge box of hard disks and everytime I did something it was always such a big deal to "save it on the disk" and then when you needed whatever you saved, you could never find them. I didn't realize either that they were still making them, I guess simply because they have pretty much been phased out over the years and my computer now doesnt have a disk drive at all. I have learned to save most of my work on flashdrives, but those are hard to keep up with sometimes and I lose them all the time. I can see sites like Google docs being the new wave of how we store data, but at the same time, it is kind of scary putting all of your documents online where they could be "lost" or something could happen to the server. Although I do use flashdrives, I will admit most of my saved work is saved on the hardrive and send it in an email if I need to have a copy of it on the go.

Alpha Ouedraogo said...

Wouah!!!Just like everybody else I thought floppy disk were already gone. However I do remember using them. I remember when I first started using computer it was only to play pokemon games and since I did not have internet at home at that time I had to go to my friend's house download the games and carry them back home on floppy disks. These were good memories but I am glad we have better storage devices today because not only were floppy disks fragile but also you could not carry that much data on it. Long life technology!!!

Taylor Parks said...

The fact that floppy disks are no longer going to be for sale makes me kind of sad. As a younger version of myself, I only used floppy disk to turn in my work. It saved so much time and paper, and all of my teacher thought I was so technologically savvy. Thinking about how much technology has changed since I was a young child, and it gives me a strange feeling that I am getting so old, even though I'm only 20. I haven't used a floppy disk in a few years, thanks to USBs, but I know I still have plenty in my desk at home. To think that my younger brother, who just turned 7, will never use some of the things that I used in my childhood is such a strange concept to grasp. I have only recently become accustom to using Google Docs (which is even better than a USB), but I have saved even more time an energy with it. Technology has really improved in the past 20 years and it is very exciting to think about what might be coming in the next 20.

Adiam said...

I also thought floppy disks were no longer being in use. The last time I used a floppy disk was about six years ago. I saved a presentation on it and it didnt show up when i was ready to present. Since that day I switched over to saving my assignments on C.D.'s instead of floppy disks. Now I upgraded to using USB flash drives and my email. I don't think the extinction of floppy disks will cause an uproar or anything because they are rarely used and nobody would even notice when they are gone.

Jenevia said...

I did use floppy disks once upon a time. I thought they were pretty good. Until people upgraded to using jump drives, which are way better because they hold more memory. But before we were introduced to jump drives, floppy disk served the purpose of portably storing information. Some people still do use floppy disk but it is very rare now a days.

Kianna said...

This post really caught my attention because like the author, I thought floppy disks were already extinct. I can't remember the last time I used a floppy disk. It was most likely in elementary school. The new way to save things is by using a flash drive or a cd. I really enjoy using my flash drive because you can purchase one with lots of memory so you don't have to worry about it filling up. They're really small & convenient and I just keep mine in my purse. Imagine traveling with floppy disks in your purse. Wouldn't work too well.

generation facebook said...

I haven’t heard people talk about floppy disks in years. I still have a box full of disks. Mostly school papers and pictures, I kept it because I thought it might be funny to look back at all the documents in the future but now I cant even find a person who has a older computer that takes floppy disks. I am so glad we moved on to USB drives and online storage. It is so much easier and can store so much more space.

Mirela Miocevic

Gorm Laursen II said...

I have used a floppy disk before....
It was in my 6th grade computer class....
Now I either use a flash drive, the school's Hdrive, or just email whatever I need to myself. In a time where computers are nessecary for school, one must be very computer savvy to suceed and make good grades.

Cassie said...

I think a post like this just really makes you take a trip down memory lane and it puts the technological era that we are in today in perspective with what technology we were working with as children (which really was not that long ago). Today I think that I take for granted my USB and online content managers. This discussion makes you realize how quickly technology has evolved, how much it saturates our culture, and how much we really depend on it. Technology is constantly changing and improving and it is easy to miss its advancements until you see the death of what we not too long ago (as children) thought was "really super cool." It's interesting to imagine what new technologies produced in the near future will cause the death of current technologies. Clearly, in this technological age, "outdated" is something that is occurring quicker and quicker!

Brandon Keen said...

I remember back in middle school having to turn in nearly all of my assignments via floppy. I also remember the days back yonder when my dad would have boxes upon boxes upon boxes of floppy drives and they would all be hand labeled and tedious. I also thought that floppy drives were obsolete as i have not even seen a floppy disk in awhile. I personally use either a flash drive or i connect my blackberry to the computer using a cable and store information to the 8 GB micro SD card. It is funny how something that is probably many times as large as that sd card used to be able to hold a relatively small amount of data. How far we have come....

Josh said...

That's actually very surprising that they're just now announcing the discontinuing of floppy disks! I thought those things were gone a long time ago, I was even beginning to think that the CD would be seeing its end within the next decade or so. I remember floppy disks being on my list for school supplies in 5th or 6th grade to save projects or any other rare assignment done on the computer. Its amazing to see how far we've come technology wise. We go from floppy disks that held only a few MB to each carrying around flash drives that have 1- 2 GB, iPods with 4-80 GB, laptops with 250GB of storage or greater, and external hard drives pushing it at 1-2 TB!! It's pretty awesome. Files are getting smaller, storage is getting bigger, and processing is becoming unfathomably fast. I really can't wait to see whats next...

Pierre Riley said...

This comes as a huge surprise to me. I had no idea that floppy disks still existed.The last time i came across a computer with a floppy disk drive or a floppy disk itself was couple years ago when I had a older model computer.If my memory serves me correctly, I use to use a floppy disk to save my essays back in high school.Having a floppy disk back then was ideal for saving various documents.I actually thought they were very cool but I must say my views have shifted drastically since then.The inception of things like a USB flash drive pretty much ended the floppy disk reign.I like the USB flash drive a lot better for a number of reasons.First and foremost, I like the fact that they are very small and neat compared to a floppy disk. Secondly, I also like the fact that they have a larger storage capacity in most cases. For instance, I own a USB flash drive with a whopping 16 GB.This enables me to save several documents, songs,pictures etc to and still have a lot more saving space available.In conclusion, I am happy to say I have been a user of a floppy disk.I enjoyed it while it lasted, however technological advances means the need for the use of floppy disk is no longer required pretty much.

Mel said...

I have used floppy disks before. I do not know the exact storage number or the type but it was the flat/ standard floppy disks that my teachers in High school and Middle school use to collect for me, to look over assignments and projects that were due. But I have not used floppy disks for over 5 years, so this news on sony is quiet interesting and funny because I thought floppy disks got replaced by USB, because the alternative I use now to store my files is the USB it more portable.

Paloma Velez said...

I loved using floppy disks. I remember that's all I used up until my middle school years. The next cool saving device that came was the usb and I remember being laughed at when I told everyone that I didn't know what a usb was. But of course, from there on after I started using the usb to save my papers for school and every digital device I purchased seemed to have a usb connection of some sort in it ( like my digital camera, my video camera, my i-pod, etc)... This story is very interesting because I thought I was a little late on the whole usb, and disk thing. I still have a ton of disks and I wish that I could see what's on some of my disks, but I haven't been able to find a computer that has a disk drive since middle school.