Sony Prepares to Kill off the Floppy
Print
To Geeks the floppy disk is more than just an old storage medium indicative of days gone past, but instead is an icon of an era when you really needed to know your stuff to operate a PC. Motherboards required jumpers, IRQ settings were still important, and the world was a magical place where an entire lifetime of important documents finally fit on a plastic disk that could slip easily into your pocket. If like me and you harbor a bit of nostalgia for the vintage 3.5-inch floppies, you might want to pickup a box now before they disappear completely.
According to Sony, who is the only remaining manufacturer of 3.5-inch floppies, production will end in March 2011 effectively killing off the technology once and for all. Inexpensive CDs, DVDs, and USB thumb drives are cited as key reasons why, but I'm sure everyone knew it was only a matter of time. Global disk sales have dropped from 47 million a year in 2002 to just 12 million in 2009 and the drive itself hasn't been standard on most PCs since around 2003. I'm sure decades from now you'll still be able to find the odd person still booting off one, but don't count on seeing them at your local retailer past mid next year.
Anyone out there still using them?
More like this
van_helblaze
April 26, 2010 at 7:58pm
So what is the universal save icon going to become?
a hard disk? flash drive? sd card?
bart3385
November 30, 2010 at 8:25am
Good question.
For many of us who'd been thru the floppy era, we understood the icon. But for future generations who never seen a floppy, the save icon will look odd for them.
gymbeau2000
April 26, 2010 at 3:39pm
This is awesome news actually...the final nail in the XP coffin for the "power users". Time to join the modern era.
leo655
April 26, 2010 at 12:17pm
Wasn't there a 2.88 flex for a while that had many compatibity issues?
Trooper_One
April 26, 2010 at 11:23am
Back when I was in college taking the computer info tech program, we were still allowed to hand in our assignments in floppy (though the Access 2003 compiles barely fit on them). The USB was starting to get popular but still too expensive (256mb for about $20). Though CD's were starting to get cheap, we didn't have admin rights to burn on them, that's if some of the machines even had a CD burner.
At just less than thirty cents a shot, it made sense to use floppy back then. That being said, I'm glad they're finally out of the picture in modern computing. It was a nice run 3.5" floppy dude, but it's time for you to retire. RIP.
PawBear
April 26, 2010 at 9:15am
... someone would kill Apple off the same way. I'm sick of reading about them.
aviaggio
April 26, 2010 at 7:38am
I've added a floppy drive to my machines for decades. But I gotta admit I can't remember the last time I actually used it. Like others, it was there to load drivers for XP installations or to boot to DOS for BIOS upgrades and other emergencies.
But I'm finding it's just not needed much anymore. USB thumb drives can be formatted to boot like a floppy and hold a lot more data. And unless you use a RAID array you really don't need special drivers for XP.
Sadly, it seems the end of the road for this tech is coming quickly.
Belboz99
April 26, 2010 at 2:13am
I imagine Sony is the last remaining manufacturer partly because Sony made so many of those crazy Mavica cameras with a floppy drive. :P
Kashamodo
April 25, 2010 at 8:38pm
Lol, I still have a computer with a zip drive(the beta of storage). I thought those were old! Long live IOmega!
Baer
April 25, 2010 at 6:40pm
I still put a floppy drive on my latest build. I almost never use it but once in a while it comes in handy for a BIOS update or some other arcane tool, not that there are not other ways to do it. I remember when they came out and replaced the 5" 360K floppys, that was a great advance in portrable storage technology then.
Thursday
April 25, 2010 at 6:05pm
All the disks we have at work were manufactured by Anda or Topford...they're the guys who manufacture most of the "house brand" media for mid to large retailers. And doesn't TDK still manufacture Floppy disks as well? Or are they just sourcing and rebranding now?
swivvle
April 25, 2010 at 5:36pm
If you don't have a slipstreamed xp disk with raid drivers or newer mobo sata drivers... no winxp install for you without a floppy!
Being able to install drivers from something other than a floppy = make me happy on windows 7
Techrocket9
April 25, 2010 at 5:32pm
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
_____________________________________________________
An army of pacifists can be defeated by one man with the will to fight.
stradric
April 25, 2010 at 5:23pm
I remember the 5.25 inch disks. They were even worse than the 3.5s. I have never been a fan of floppy disks like I am of USB drives. To quote Jack Nicholson's Joker: "I'm glad you're dead!"
Now I just wish it was as easy to make a bootable USB flash drive as it was to make a MS-DOS bootable floppy...
dj-anon
April 25, 2010 at 4:58pm
There is one PC and three laptops in this house, none of them with floppy support.
khaz19
April 26, 2010 at 4:53am
Since we're taking count, 3 (out of 4) desktops & 3 (out of 5) laptops in this house have FDD support.
On a side note, I work for an Industrial PC manufacturer, and we still use WinXP (with no sign of moving to a newer OS any time soon) with RAID & SATA configurations (a FDD is needed to load the driverrs). We also use them for BIOS updates/flashes & hardware diagnostics. So March 2011 will be fun.
Connect with MaximumPC
Featured Content
We introduce Intel's latest class of tablet killers and review 4 of the first Ultra...
Where have all the memorable videogame enemies gone?
This month's issue
Feature
11 Hardware Hacks
Feature
Overclock Your CPU
How-To
Supercharge Your Smartphone
Build It
A Powerful $830 Rig
Most Commented Articles
Latest Max PC Tweets
- maximumpc: Multi-Monitor Usage On The Rise http://t.co/eWfJfCEG11 hours 53 min ago
- maximumpc: Windows 8 Consumer Preview Coming On February 29 http://t.co/3Nd04FdR17 hours 41 min ago
- maximumpc: Can RIM *ever* catch a break? Not today! App World numbers not as great as previously reported http://t.co/3ERRhr311 day 13 hours ago
