Floppy Disks, gone or completely forgotten?

[knight_dkn]

Were thinking of not putting floppy drives in any of the new machines we build at work, just wondering how much people still use them?

[gamehead200]

I still use them... Got a bunch right here...

[Mr. Spock]

Still Use them to so handy in some cases think of lost password's Yeah i know it's just 1,44 MB but you can do a lot with it

[Synapse]

only time i EVER use a floppy is for a startup disk. thats about it. or when i was going too school too move my reports or whatever on to the floppy... but now most computers at school are running macintosh....

[MCT]

i put 1 in all my pcs (i have 3, building another 1 at the moment)

but i VERY seldom use them, maybe 3 or 4 times a yr, when its retarted 2 burn a cd for a word doc or something

[N1K]

only time i EVER use a floppy is for a startup disk. thats about it.

Same reason, if I need something to transfer from one PC to the other and network isn't available, I'm using USB stick..

[prathapml]

I have the drive, and so does everybody else, and I don't use it - been 2 years since I last used a floppy disk. If at all I need something on a floppy, I just run Virtual Floppy Disk (there's a tool like that) - and get the supposedly "floppy-disk" contents written to as an IMG. That's frequently needed in bootable floppy creation - and then..... I make the IMG an option on a multi-boot CD-RW. Simple way to eliminate floppies!

Dis-continuing of having floppy drives in new PCs would be a good step.

[CoffeeFiend]

a flo... what?

I don't have one in any of my systems anymore. As for bootdisk, I got a custom bootcd (heavily modded bart bootdisk...) and even then, it seems everyone is moving to WinPE instead.

I still got one kicking in the basement, for those times where I have to use a bios flasher in dos, in which case I plug it for the 5 minutes it takes and then take it out after. (and I could get away without it easily)

I mean, we got networks shares, email, (well, all kinds of networked ways to xfer stuff), writeable cd/dvd media, usb(2) memory sticks and hard drives and everything else... Definately no need for a floppy imho.

[rupert86]

I advise my customers not to have one. But it is a difficulty getting them understand its now of no use. I think it has too long been in fashion.

Personally, I myself have one in my system, and I'm likely to discard it if I get that Virtual Floppy disk type of prog. The main reason is, it is much needed in BIOS & firmware updates, although being most unreliable method.

[prathapml]

I'm likely to discard floppy if I get that Virtual Floppy disk type of prog.

Then joy is here - my contribution towards stabbing at the venerable floppy's last remnants of life:

Virtual floppy disk for windows

another link

Enjoy! Get vfdwin from there, and dump the floppy drive.

You can use winimage to make .IMG images of your existing floppies. For new floppies, use winimage to make an empty floppy image - and mount that in vfdwin. Then, put that .IMG to your CD-RW (so that blank CDs aren't wasted) as a boot-sector. And you can even take 10 .IMGs and put them as a multi-boot CD - the power of CD!

For BIOS upgrade flash, nero itself has a floppy-image of win98se with it installed - use it as boot-sector, put your awdflash.exe (or whatever your flashing program is) on the CD as one file, and the new BIOS as another file (yourbios.bin) - nirvana! No floppies needed ABSOLUTELY for any purpose.

[sven]

i still use em lol. many of the computers at my house are windows 98 or lower (well, all but 1) no usb, no cd-rw, the didn't even have network cards until i put them in. mostly just use the network and send stuff to the better computer (cd-rw, usb, firewire). but depending on how my id*** brother starts up the computer, the network idea doesn't work and i use a floppy.

LOL, my mother spend a half hour last month formating 25-50 old floppys for the office. word document ect

[Bâshrat the Sneaky]

I don't use it anymore...

When I really have to I connect an external one to a USB port....

[gamehead200]

LOL, my mother spend a half hour last month formating 25-50 old floppys for the office.  word document ect

I did that with a bunch I have...

[CoffeeFiend]

I use WinImage a lot too and burn them with nero, but sometimes when i can't find a cdrw and don't want to waste a cdr for it - then i dig the floppy out. Mind you I'd probably be better off just wasting the cdr anyways than waste my time bothering to find the old drive in the basement, open the case, plug it, etc (waste close to an hour to save a CD worth about a whole quarter...) The only bad thing is you can't save old bios images to the cdr(w) like you could on a floppy but usually it's a non issue. Either ways I haven't touched my floppy drive in well over a year. More often than not I'll just use by bootcd and read the flasher & image over a network share, fat32 partition (or use ntfsdospro as a last resort). No bad flashes yet either

[prathapml]

sometimes when i can't find a cdrw and don't want to waste a cdr for it

VMware! (if its simply floppy for confirmation testing)