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Three and a Half inch Floppy

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woodchip

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Posted February 21, 2013 at 7:17PM

Just got me thinking, How many still have one of the above? and do you still use it?

Another one for you, Programmers seem to have lost the ability to create small fast programs. It must be that they have become lazy because most have big fast cpu's and hard drives

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WhiteTruckMan

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Posted February 24, 2013 at 5:42PM

I should have said les convenient and unwieldy that I first thought they would be. Initial thought was of a single lead, with a usb plug at one end and an ide connector on the other with a power socket that together could be plugged into a sata device so they could be used on the fly, so to speak. I tend personally to think of hard drives in this context, but thats just me.

I also have a couple of 2.5 inch portable hdd enclosures that merely require a usb2 connection to run, hence my confusion.

WTM

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woodchip

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Posted February 24, 2013 at 6:23PM

Looks like I stirred up a Nest with this thread, and its driffted way off target

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Aitchbee

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Posted February 25, 2013 at 8:31AM

A floppy disk comes in handy when you get [on switching on your computer] a blank black screen with the message " NTLDR is missing " ... just happened this morning on my laptop :o[

I'm confident I'll be able to fix this with a floppy XP boot disk and recover 100gb of important sound files :o]

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HondaMan

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Posted February 25, 2013 at 9:07AM

Whenever I do a self-build which is about every two years, I always include a 3.5" floppy and a multicard reader combo unit

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retep888™

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Posted February 25, 2013 at 10:22AM

woodchip

From time to time I still have to use a floppy for Windows installation when a RAID driver was asked for, in the old days, IDE was the way to go but now I've to get a USB one instead.

HondaMan

I wonder if you still can find a motherboard with a floppy connection in next 2 years time but I was surprised to find this modern Z77 motherboard from AsRock click here which incorporated a floppy connection.

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D@ve

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Posted February 25, 2013 at 8:44PM

To everyone mentioning how useful floppys are for system recovery - what can you do with these bootable Windows floppy disks that you can't do with the Recovery Console (Command Prompt) on a Windows CD / DVD? In the 10 years or so that I've been building and fixing computers, I have never required a floppy to recover a system.

Chronos the 2nd

Are you aware there are tools within Windows that allow you to make an image that you can deploy to a USB stick (with whatever programs / files you want already installed) and use that to install Windows? That's how I do all my installations now. Then you wouldn't even have to temporarily connect an optical drive ;)

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Forum Editor

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Posted February 25, 2013 at 11:48PM

"I have never required a floppy to recover a system."

Neither have I.

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Chronos the 2nd

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Posted February 26, 2013 at 8:30AM

D@ve

Yes I am aware but I have had a couple of difficult installs using a USB so prefer my own slipstreamed DVD's which always work.

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