USB Thumbdrives > Floppies

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lorcani

2[H]4U
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Apr 21, 2003
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I rarely post new threads, but something piqued my attention when I was replying to another thread in this forum, so here goes nothing.

People don't like to burn a single document onto a 80-minute CD-R. It's a huge waste of space, and CD-Rs, while plentiful, are still too expensive to just throw away like that. Most people, when faced with this situation, either suck it up and burn it on a disk, or go grab a floppy and use that.

But, floppies are ancient. A lot of new systems these days do not have floppy drives. [Example: I was doing a project with someone else, and he backed up all his research onto a floppy, and gave it to me so I could finalize it. I get home, only to realize that I don't have a floppy drive. I never installed one inn this system, because I never saw the need. I went down to the library and finished the project there, printing it out at $0.20 a sheet. Also, I think the new Sony Vaio's or possibly some model from another big-brand manufacturer have no floppy drive.] Oh, and they click loudly when in use. When I hear that clicking, I start gnashing my teeth. I can't stand it. :D

However, despite all this, most institutions and home users still reach for the floppy when they need to transfer data. I burn CDs at the moment, but I'm going to get a thumbdrive for myself, probably as a Christmas gift for myself. Every computer I have seen in recent years has a CD drive. I bet 99% of computers manufactured in recent years (well, at least in the developed world) have a USB port, either 1.1 or 2.0.

USB thumbdrives are relatively cheap for their capacity. They are large enough to carry even media files, and yet still cost-effective enough to be available to the same amount of the population that can afford computers in the first place. They can be secured with a password, and transfer at speeds many times faster than floppy drives ever could (and they don't click). :p

We all know about USB thumbdrives, but we are enthusiasts! We need to start showing these things to the computer illiterate. My local school-district still forces all students at the beginning of the year to buy a single floppy. I've seen floppies shatter into a million dangerous shards, I've seen them fail to work mysteriously, and I've seen them just generally be abused. Wouldn't things be a whole lot better if students paid an extra few dollars for a more widely-accepted medium? Thumbdrives are way more robust (Shown best by our own, in-house review of the VisionTek Xtreme2 GO Drive) and way more versatile.

Anyone have any comments or a point I may be overlooking? I really think it's time to send the floppy drive the way of the Dodo bird. :)
 
<--still on the floppy


I'm looking around for all sorts of small accesories to add to my rig, and a thumbdrive is at the top. Now if I could just be persuaded into a specific one.... ;)
 
USB Flashdrives all the way man...

I have a laptop and it doesn't have a floppy drive. In my oppinion floppies are, unreliable, and they dont' hold nearly enough data these days (what with multimedia presentations and graphics in documents and whatnot), plus they are so slow!

Anyhow I think you have a good idea because it would stop the school from having to invest in new floppy drives every year or at least having to pull the stupid covers out of them when they get stuck, that was a major problem at my highschool.

If they decided on one brand of flash drive for all students to purchase they would be golden... If they are running windows 98 various flash drives seem to work off different drivers, at least in my experience. In windows 2000 and XP there are no problems, just plug and play.

The only thing they'd need to make this feasable is front access USB ports because i'm sure they don't want the students prodding around on the back of the machines, pulling cables out and whatnot.
 
The floppy drive is dead, and people are finally beginning to accept it.
I haven't had a one in my systems for nigh on 5 years now, and if all goes to plan will never have to again.
I've used a few different brands of USB stick, and they're all pretty good. The 256MB Sandisk cruzer mini I have at the moment is fantastic, and I recommend them to all my friends & family. They're great for small files & whatnot, and are bootable if your system supports it.
 
I love my thumbdrive but strangely enough what I use my 256mb drive for mostly right now is one of the things that a floppy would still work for. I keep a copy of all my programming assignments on it, most of the files are only a few kb.
 
[H]arls said:
The floppy drive is dead, and people are finally beginning to accept it.
I haven't had a one in my systems for nigh on 5 years now, and if all goes to plan will never have to again.
I've used a few different brands of USB stick, and they're all pretty good. The 256MB Sandisk cruzer mini I have at the moment is fantastic, and I recommend them to all my friends & family. They're great for small files & whatnot, and are bootable if your system supports it.
Click to expand...

Floppy is not dead, it's hard to get rid of legacy hardware because there are certain times when you do need to do somthing that requires that old floppy. I have to admit though that when I can make a floppy image and burn it to a bootable CD-R I do, cause I hate the data transfer rate of floppies... so unbearably slow :(
 
Word of mouth alone won't inspire a wide-spread adoption of thumb drive use, otherwise it would've already. The facts are that many institutions ('specially at the high school level) still have ancient machines running OSs that would require drivers for thumb drives, or don't have front USB ports (which weren't common 3+ years ago despite USB ports being standard by then).

Telling people to go fish around the rear of a system to plug in their memory is more of a hassle for some than having to deal with floppies. It's not just the computers at the institution but the home PCs people will transfer files to and from as well. Even if none of those were an obstacle, most non-enthusiasts would rather not spend $40+ on something a floppy can do...

'Course they could get a cheaper 16MB or 32MB thumb drive but smaller capacities get rarer and rarer since enthusiasts are the biggest market for the devices and enthusiasts would rather spend a lil' more and get 128MB+. Widespread adoption will happen eventually tho, the fool-proof OS support and usability is already there and that's usually one of the biggest hurdles for new media. There's even BIOS support and whatnot these days...
 
i have 3 or 4 usb drives.
the biggest hassle is already mentioned, fishing around the rear of a system to plug it in or having front ports that are crowded by plastic on the sides and you cant fit the drive in at all.
 
omega-x said:
i have 3 or 4 usb drives.
the biggest hassle is already mentioned, fishing around the rear of a system to plug it in or having front ports that are crowded by plastic on the sides and you cant fit the drive in at all.
Click to expand...

Maybe you should get yourself a short USB extension? But like a good one to prevent signal degredation
 
grjr said:
Maybe you should get yourself a short USB extension? But like a good one to prevent signal degredation
Click to expand...
That's fine when you're at home, but the whole point of thumb drives is mobility. Lugging around an extension to use on computers you may access that don't have front ports doesn't really provide any benefits since you've still gotta finger around for the port, it can help with plastic protusions on the chassis that prevent insertion of the key tho. The point was that it is still a problem when you may need to access they key older computers.
 
yeah I know, but it would be the best solution for using a thumb drive on a comp where the front USB port doesn't allow the USB drive to fit. I wonder if they make like really short extensions, like 3' or <1' perferably.
 
grjr said:
yeah I know, but it would be the best solution for using a thumb drive on a comp where the front USB port doesn't allow the USB drive to fit. I wonder if they make like really short extensions, like 3' or <1' perferably.
Click to expand...
Not sure where you'd buy one but they do make 'em, seen small-ish ones sold with USB keys before, maybe they were more like 12' but still decently short. Making sure you buy a relatively slim key can help avoid the hassle altogether too.
 
I know a lot of new systems for institutions have front-USB. The local school district has some sort of deal with IBM: every teacher has a NetVista in their classroom, and the computer labs are all IBM NetVistas (Massive Picture Warning). That pictures shows the front-USB ports better than most other pictures I found. They are all either running 2000 Pro or XP. I don't know how good Windows 2000 Professional is about automatic device detection, but I know XP is pretty damn good at it.

Since they have front-USB, it would be just as convenient, perhaps even more convenient, to use a USB thumbdrive versus a floppy. None of them have CD-burners, either.

It just amazes me that people are still willing to use such outdated technology when plentiful options abound. As I stated before, all three computers under my roof have no floppy drive. If someone needed me to get information off a floppy drive, I probably couldn't do it without a lot of rooting through drawers trying to find an old floppy drive. We live in a world that needs to be able to carry more than 1.4Mb safely and without any real annoyance.
 
i have a floppy for sata drivers, and cause i had one.

128mb cruser mini by sandisk on hand as well :D
 
Falls Included said:
i have a floppy for sata drivers, and cause i had one.

128mb cruser mini by sandisk on hand as well :D
Click to expand...
There's a few ways to turn those floppies into massive boot-drives, by putting a bunch of different bits of data required for first boot on a thumb-drive, and setting it as the first boot device.
 
I abandoned the floppy a while ago. I still have one sitting around at home just in case, but it's been a while since it was hooked up.

Thumbdrives all the way. I've got two SanDisk Cruzer Mini's, a 128MB and a 512MB. :D I've also got a 20GB USB laptop drive that pulls power from USB for those especially large transfers.

Oh, and for the person who couldn't get the thumbdrive into the USB ports because other things were plugged in around it, the Cruzer Mini is designed to be able to plug in regardless of whether other USB ports are in use around it. I've never had a problem.
 
I recently purchased the 1gb apacer handy steno. I needed this because I often find myself transfering large amounts of data from other computers, or my lappy to my main rig.

I purchased this drive after alot of research, and I'm happy with it. I started to carry it around for a week on my keychain and it got all scrached up and I dropped it a few times, so the cap has a very small crack in it. Now I dont carry it anymore, only when I know I'm going to need it.

I think I'm going to purchase a smaller, more durable flash drive to keep permanetly on my keychain, and keep the 1gb drive in my room for large x-fer's.

Flash drives are the shit. :cool:
 
or you could just email stuff back and forth.

i haven't had a floppy (on my main box) for about a year now. I don't miss it.
 
Don't include a copy in any of my builds...You can get a 32mb one for SOOO cheap if you are short on cash...That is MUCH larger capacity wise than a floppy...
 
home FTP server all the way... 6GB space for school assignments, but I have a thumbdrive around too, but school runs Win98 with HDD lock down (reboot deletes drivers) so.... I stick to my FTP server for docs, but I use the thumbdrive for laptop transfers and transfers to friends XP machines, these things are great but I do have a couple floppy drives in tthe basement for those incidental moments.
 
Bootable thumbdrives (more motherboard support for) are what everyone else is waiting for.

To share files between my computers, well I use the network or re-writable CDs.

None of my computers has front usb port, so the want for usb drives has not kicked in yet for me.
 
On both of my full towers you won't see a floppy drive. Not because I don't have them but because I have them hidden behind knockout panels, screwed in on only one side of a 5" bay. I am in the transition phase where I am figuring out exactly how much I really need a floppy drive and I have to be pretty desperate to pry that panel out just to hear the clicks and transfer slower than a 232c serial port.

The only usb thumbdrive I have is my 128mb philips mp3 keychain. And I can't use it like a thumbdrive because that requires two minutes to take the lanyard/remote/earphones off the thumb drive unit. Pain in the ass.

Sure wish another one of those deals like the 128 for $1.04 would come back. For that price, even pre-rebate, I would collect a couple dozen to use like floppies.
 
spectrumbx said:
Bootable thumbdrives (more motherboard support for) are what everyone else is waiting for.

To share files between my computers, well I use the network or re-writable CDs.

None of my computers has front usb port, so the want for usb drives has not kicked in yet for me.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what i was thinking. BIOS flashes via thumbdrive? Well pretty much anything the floppy does, but easier. Macs phased out floppies god knows how long ago. It would do good to have thumbdrives bootable to finally push floppies out for good.
 
Some mobos do let you boot from a thumb drive I believe, dunno whether you could flash the BIOS on any with it tho.
 
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