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The floppy disk just won’t die

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Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#101

Post by Tor3 »

TonyTrapp wrote: post #39
charles_f wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember picking up floppies from the stack of "ok to erase" ones, and having one not formatting being a common occurrence. Certainly we were using them quite a bit and it was a while back, but still, reliability was nowhere near a USB stick as long as you don't buy the cheapest ones

Let's go revisit some USB sticks that hasn't been touched in 10-20 years though. Flash memory can also get unreliable if you don't access it for a prolonged time. SSDs should be powered on regularly to keep the data alive.

Back when we started to use CDs for backups I was horrified when I found that in general those CDs started to become unreadable after only a year in storage. We never had any problems with original CDs (say, the tons of CDs that came with an SGI computer), but the consumer-type writable ones didn't last at all. I think the technology got better after some years, but I still wouldn't trust a writable CD or DVD to last. For flash, at least, they are actually spec'ed.. and they don't last. They can't. Every bit holds a charge.. which will dissipate, eventually.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#102

Post by Dalewyn »

wrycoder wrote: post #76
causi wrote: post #5

There is nothing in the modern hardware ecosystem quite as satisfying as the feeling and sound of a 3.5 inch floppy ka-chunking into a floppy drive. Sure, everything being silent magic these days is nice, but I never felt so in touch with a computer as I did as a child dragging files off a floppy drive and hearing the drive start to buzz and hum. It was like being able to touch the data itself.

I liked the old floppies. They were great for backing up personal data. They were easy to write on and store in special trays. I still haven’t discovered a convenient way to handle flash drives. They are to small to write on, and so I have a pile of them tossed in a box, and I have to search through them to find the right one. Anyone have a good way?

Minimalism is trendy, especially in recent times, but there's an argument to be made that there is irreplacable usability in something being Big and Chonk.

Chungus data mediums, connectors, etc. almost never go missing or break from simple daily use.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#103

Post by Tor3 »

dale_glass wrote: post #34

One of the things I wonder about in retrospect is why floppy drives remained at a static level of ability for the most part. I mean I know there were the LS120 and such things, but why wasn't there a manufacturer just pushing the tech a bit further? Like why not have a drive made with additional precision and capable of squeezing 3 MB into a floppy? Is there something about the actual media that put a hard limit on h…

"Is there something about the actual media that put a hard limit on how tightly information could be packed on it that couldn't be solved with a better drive?"

For floppies: Yes. It wouldn't help to use better precision. The medium itself can't handle that kind of density. 3.5" floppy drives actually went over the limit with 1.44MB ones - they fail when kept in storage for some years. Much much more than 720KB floppies.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#104

Post by xupybd »

causi wrote: post #5

There is nothing in the modern hardware ecosystem quite as satisfying as the feeling and sound of a 3.5 inch floppy ka-chunking into a floppy drive. Sure, everything being silent magic these days is nice, but I never felt so in touch with a computer as I did as a child dragging files off a floppy drive and hearing the drive start to buzz and hum. It was like being able to touch the data itself.

I found similar enjoyment in mini-disks.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#105

Post by Dalewyn »

Tor3 wrote: post #101
TonyTrapp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's go revisit some USB sticks that hasn't been touched in 10-20 years though. Flash memory can also get unreliable if you don't access it for a prolonged time. SSDs should be powered on regularly to keep the data alive.

Back when we started to use CDs for backups I was horrified when I found that in general those CDs started to become unreadable after only a year in storage. We never had any problems with original CDs (say, the tons of CDs that came with an SGI computer), but the consumer-type writable ones didn't last at all. I think the technology got better after some years, but I still wouldn't trust a writable CD or DVD to last…

This is because commercial optical disks and recordable optical disks are actually completely different storage mediums.

Commercial optical disks, as in the disks that you got when you bought games and movies and the like, are physically stamped. The data is recorded as physical pits that are stamped onto the disk from a master copy. That disk isn't degrading unless it suffers severe external physical damage.

By contrast, recordable optical disks write their data using inks and dyes that are burned by a recording drive's laser. These inks and dyes can and will degrade over time, eventually leading to data loss.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#106

Post by Tor3 »

TonyTrapp wrote: post #11

> Following the rodeo incident, Necaise decided to finally upgrade, but not to an entirely new machine—just to a floppy-to-USB emulator. These devices cost around $275 each... That's odd. Gotek and similar emulators should be available for a tenth of that price. There are several variations though, so it smells to me like someone is reselling a Gotek "guaranteed to work" with a specific type of machine with a large m…

Odd indeed. As far as I know the Gotek was invented exactly for use by embroidery machines, and the ads are everywhere. I tried entering "embroidery floppy emulator" into Google and an Amazon link for a $38 Gotek came up first (and, as we know, we can get it cheaper than that).

But of course a few lines below there's a "floppyusbemulator.com" page with a $250 "Nalbantov" drive (which are sold for $175 elsewhere, and there are probably other variantes).

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#107

Post by Tor3 »

human wrote: post #57

I was sure this was going to speak of the floppy disk icon for saving; not the actual floppy disks!

I have recently seen some weird icons which I couldn't understand at first, in some software.. turned out it tried to depict a USB thumb drive, and meant "save". So someone, at least, is trying to replace the floppy disk icon. If that's an actual improvement I'm not so sure about.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#108

Post by dusted »

toast0 wrote: post #56
masfuerte wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had several hard drives fail over the years. They all signalled their impending doom by making interesting noises so I never lost any data. When my SSD fails I think I'm going to miss the noises.

I've worked with lots of (enterprisy) hard drives and SSDs. The hard drive failure rate was easily 10x the rate of the SSDs, but the SSDs basically never gave symptoms of impending doom. They just disappeared from the data channel. We did have one group of drives that gave symptoms... 50% of the batch dropped dead within 2 weeks of entering service, a good number failed over the time it took to get the rest of them r…

This, SSD failure modes are scary! Even enterprise SSDs will just go from "all ok" to "no device connected" at any random time.

So far, most of the HDDs I've seen fail, gave _some_ indication prior to it, via smart or "strange" behaviour.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#109

Post by jamiek88 »

ibcj wrote: post #99

I still have a sheet of the write-protect tabs for 5.25" floppies that I, for some unknown reason, refuse to throw away. I have one flash drive that I stuck a tab on ages ago for giggles (I didn't want to lose the contents until I got it replicated), and it still makes me smile. I'll occasionally show the sheet to groups of engineers and ask them if they know what it is. Only the dinosaurs ever get it.

Fond memories of the ‘true’ floppy 5.25” what an upgrade that was from cassette tape for me!

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#110

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

theamk wrote: post #79
causi wrote: post #5

There is nothing in the modern hardware ecosystem quite as satisfying as the feeling and sound of a 3.5 inch floppy ka-chunking into a floppy drive. Sure, everything being silent magic these days is nice, but I never felt so in touch with a computer as I did as a child dragging files off a floppy drive and hearing the drive start to buzz and hum. It was like being able to touch the data itself.

The ka-chunk was nice but was always immediate worry: "Will it read today? Or am I going to lose another file or two?" The things got so much better when our school's machines got HDDs.. There was a good chance that there would be an old version of file floating around, or in the worst case you could retry read a few more times and maybe you'll get lucky and copy it to HDD.

>"Will it read today? Or am I going to lose another file or two?"

Yeah, even in my poor country, people were quick to replace them with USB thumbdrives. Floppies were just too damn unreliable, especially when using school/public computers.

But, for us students back then they provided a nice emergency escape. When we had to hand over our assignments on floppy, and we didn't complete them in time because lazy, we would open the .doc assignment file in notepad as binary, delete some random data, then save it to floppy. It would be 2-5 days till the professor would get back to you saying "the floppy you gave me was corrupted, please resubmit your work ASAP" and that gave us enough time to finish it.

Thank you for your sacrifice floppies.

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