Today on Slashdot (a terrific site if you’re into geekery) there was the usual annual story about the death of the floppy disk.
Yes, I know – floppy disks are hopelessly obsolete. In their largest common form they only store 1.44 megabytes. (Yes, there were 2.88 megabyte floppy disks as well as 120-megabyte \”SuperDisks\”. I don’t count Zip disks because the media was rigid, not floppy – hence “floppy” disks.) CDs store 700 megabytes and more; DVDs store over four gigabytes. Flash drives are cheap and popular, and easy to get – gigabytes of storage for a few dollars. Why would I care about floppy disks?
Well, there are several reasons:
- Floppy disks are reusable. You can store data on them – and then you can change your mind, and put new data on them. While they certainly have a usable life, a floppy disk can be used for years of continuous active service, and much longer with only occasional use.
- Floppy disks are compact – particularly 3.5″ versions. (5.25″ and 8″ are somewhat less convenient, I’ll concede!) You can fit one in a shirt pocket. You can mail two of them in a standard envelope.
- Floppy disks are cheap. They can be given away without remorse. Flash drives bottom out around $10 (you can occasionally get lucky and find them cheaper), but getting large numbers of small flash drives for $1-2 each seems impossible. (Yes, I can use CD and DVD but they aren’t reusable. CD-RW and DVD+-RW are not as reliable as their standard cousins.)
- Some hardware depends on floppy disks. Some computers (such as my Commodore 64 and Amiga 500) require floppy disks. The slashdot article above talks about hardware such as automated sewing machines and aviation equipment that require floppy disks to function.
- Sometimes, a floppy disk is the most convenient way to store data. I teach courses at a university. The university server is accessible over the Internet, but it isn’t always reliable. I have a server at home but it is large and has a lot of data on it. My grade spreadsheets are very small. I find it really handy to throw the spreadsheet on a floppy disk on my desktop computer so that I have a backup copy in case the server is down.
I actually actively use floppy disks at work. We take low-resolution digital photos of clients’ homes and commercial buildings, in case underwriters want to see them. The images are small enough to fit on floppy disks, so I use disks to store them. The disks are flat so they store well in a client file, and I can fit several images on a disk. I could use a CD, but I’d waste most of the space and I couldn’t revise the images if I wanted.
Yes, it’s true that few new computers have floppy drives in them. My Acer desktop had a bay for one, and a header on the motherboard to connect to the floppy controller, but no drive was installed. I have three USB floppy drives kicking around (some companies even sell some that are faster than internal floppy drives (I have one of the 2x drives and it works really well) but internal floppy drives are under $10 at many mail-order establishments, so I installed one internally.
Besides, if you pick yourself up a few of the USB drives (and add an internal or two for good measure), you can make an awesome floppy disk RAID array! (I have to admit that I did this under Linux for giggles… and it works! And it makes a spectacular sound, especially if you use RAID5 and all of the disks are running simultaneously!)