View Poll Results: When 3.5" Floppy will be replaced

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  • 2005 or earlier

    16 31.37%
  • 2006

    2 3.92%
  • 2007

    5 9.80%
  • 2008

    6 11.76%
  • 2009

    0 0%
  • 2010

    6 11.76%
  • 2011

    0 0%
  • 2012

    0 0%
  • 2013

    0 0%
  • 2014 or later

    16 31.37%
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Thread: When 3.5" Floppy will be replaced

  1. #1
    Senior Member racronus's Avatar
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    When 3.5" Floppy will be replaced

    When do think 3.5" Floppy will be replaced, as in no longer included as a accessorie when buying a complete system?

  2. #2
    Ultimate Member richard_cocks's Avatar
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    Never, there were some movements in the late eighties to try and do away with them, but quite frankly they are indispensible unless they find somethign else which is as easy to boot up a computer in an emergency than a boot floppy.

    CDs are more prone to not working without minimal drivers so boot CDS woudln't work.

    I don't really use floppies as a transportable storage medium, I use a floppy as a boot disk.

    However they are the best transportable storage because everyone has one, there aren't problems, you could say that everyone has a CD drive, but CDs are too large to fit in your pocket, and it's easier to fluff up a cd-burn. Also not every computer has one yet.

    Until wireless networking for all is standard then I don't see it being replaced soon.

  3. #3
    Ultimate Member AllGamer's Avatar
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    As Richard said, even if CDs are good, and Transportable, in my case i have no problem sliding a cd in my walled or shirt pocket. Not every CD ROM / DVD Rom drive is bootable,

    some BIOS are stupid, you set it to boot, it can't do it, etc.

    so i agree about the FDD being here forever.

    say even if they have a 120 Meg SFDD, then you can still use the 1.4 Mb to boot no matter what.

    It's like Watching Johny Neumonic, all that computer junk, and people still uses FDD


  4. #4
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    When the internet and mass networking becomes freely availiable to all, as people will be able to transfer files to each other quickly and easily without having to go to the trouble of preparing a floppy disc and carting it from PC to PC. The only remaining use of Floppys would be as boot or emergency repair discs, but we are seeing more and more bootable CD's and when again CDRW becomes availiable idespread, everyone will be using repair CD's rather than floppies

    --Just my two penneth

    --Jakk

  5. #5
    Complete & Utter Member j.m@talk's Avatar
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    Vive La Floppy

  6. #6
    Ultimate Member RayH's Avatar
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    That they're relatively inexpensive and people have a bunch of files on them, probably never. Maybe when people move away from DOS. But then, do other OS have needs for it?

  7. #7
    Senior Member racronus's Avatar
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    richard and allgamer you guys don't think the booting problem would be solved in a decade?


    as for being portable, I would think a usb key chain is more flexible than a floppy although they do cost more, but cd-r use to cost like a dollar a piece when first made and I still have
    $200 cd burner with 2x from the "early" days.
    Last edited by racronus; 08-05-2002 at 07:26 PM.

  8. #8
    Ultimate Member richard_cocks's Avatar
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    Well it hasn't been solved in the previous decade, and I don't think anyone is working on it.

    As for the USB keychain, again, it won't work under DOS (well there were reports of USB keyboard in DOS on another thread so it might work one day?) but unless they have tiny HD like drives that you shove in when you need something to boot from in emergency the floppy is still the best bet, and floppy drives are cheaper than other drives, it best suits boot disk situations.

    Other than that there is no reason to replace them, they still do what they need to fine, and for everything else there is FTP or a CD-burner.

  9. #9
    Ultimate Member AllGamer's Avatar
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    althought the USB keychain is a good idea, it's too expensive still, to be cost effective at this point.

    so 1.44 is still the way to go

  10. #10
    Ultimate Member AllGamer's Avatar
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    By The way did you know, i hate USB??

    if that was a FireWire device (IEEE 1394), then it'll be a different story.

    or the new upcomming Serial SCSI

    but still i love WIRELESS the best!!

  11. #11
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    I think soon once Win98se dies, or they find a way to truely make it plug n play like 2K and XP the hardware companies will start including their software on USB keychain thingies. I mean there is a 512MB USB keychain device, you cant do that with a floppy. I wouldn't be surprised if they did away with dricers on CDs for this method. Though storage might hamper the idea, CDs stack nice and neat, those little usb things can just get thrown in a drawer.


    ***Note to self: Read other posts before adding your own. DOH!!
    When life gives you lemons, throw them at some other poor sucker.

  12. #12
    Ultimate Member AllGamer's Avatar
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    too messy, do you know how many drawers or keychain holders on the wall you'll need along the years???

  13. #13
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    I think soon once Win98se dies, or they find a way to truely make it plug n play like 2K and XP the hardware companies will start including their software on USB keychain thingies. I mean there is a 512MB USB keychain device, you cant do that with a floppy. I wouldn't be surprised if they did away with dricers on CDs for this method. Though storage might hamper the idea, CDs stack nice and neat, those little usb things can just get thrown in a drawer.
    When life gives you lemons, throw them at some other poor sucker.

  14. #14
    Ultimate Member richard_cocks's Avatar
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    yup, I've seen floppy drives being sold about as cheap as a floppy disk, it costs little for people to add them to machines and there is no point not having one.

    No one is going to invest in solutions to other ways of emergency booting because there is no money to be made from it.

    Like it or not we'll be stuck with the loveable 1.44 double density floppy for a good many years yet, I wouldn't expect them to go unless there is a massive shake up to do with drives and data as a whole.

  15. #15
    Ultimate Member AllGamer's Avatar
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    Richard is rite.

    This point brings back how Futile to use USB or FireWire to be your Troubleshooting medium, when you are trying to fix a machine and is booting up.

    until none of those devices can be started at Boot Up time.

    that goes for CD too, for those that don't know, bootable CDs has drivers in them, else it wont load after boot.

    but back to the FDD 1.44 mb 3.5"
    everysystem will load that by default
    no driver needed.

    just because of that, it beats the competition.

    no need to compare prices, or feasibility, or sizes.

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