[xubuntu-users] Am I the only one who still uses floppies?

Steve Litt slitt at troubleshooters.com
Tue Jul 28 06:30:25 UTC 2015


On Mon, 27 Jul 2015 21:42:46 -0400
JMZ <florentior at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Silly question: am I the only one who still uses floppies (ie. 1.44
> MB HD 3.5"/90mm)?

I assume so.

> 
> I use them to temporarily store shell scripts.  Since scripts are 
> usually only a few kilobytes long (if that), floppies are great for 
> storing works in progress.  After a week or two I make ongoing
> archive tarball CD backups.  The scripts don't stay on very fragile
> media like a floppy for a long time.
> 
> You'll be surprised that floppies are still available.  Here in the 
> northeast USA unopened boxes of floppies can be gotten at thrift
> shops, junk stores, dollar stores etc.  Heck, I even found two
> unopened boxes of "Macintosh formatted" floppies.  I don't remember
> Mac formatted floppies even "in the day".  Weird!

Here's the problem. In 1989, you could buy a box of 10 floppies, and 9
or 10 would be good. By 2001, half would be bad right out of the box,
and another three would go bad within a year. I used them to boot
computers til about 2008, but even that usage began to be too much work
when I'd need to format four floppies to get one valid boot floppy.

I'd still be using floppies today, for a few tasks including boot disks,
if they were made like they were made in 1989.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21




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