Topic 'Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's' in forum 'PC Hardware Discussion/Reviews' - dslreports.com

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:48:12 EDT

Mannus posted : 40's are the new 60's

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:54:14 EDT

Cthen posted :

And that's the reason why I haven't got rid of my ZIP drive which happened to be in the once awesome Gateway 2000 Pentium II 300mhz, circa 2007. :D

2007? In 2007, I had a 3.2Ghz Athlon XP3200+ with 1GB of RAM and an 80GB HDD... I think you mean more 2002-2004 timeframe.

More of the time era of the '90's. P3 processors were out before the y2k scandal.
--
"I like to refer to myself as an Adult Film Efficienato." - Stuart Bondek

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:51:43 EDT

AlphaOne posted : Ooops. I mean 1997.
Senior moments in my 40s ???? Not good.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:19:47 EDT

drslash posted :

said by aurgathor:

I thought the punching was from 720k to 1.44M, not from 1.44M to 2.88M.

You are probably right. We are talking about stuff from 25 years ago and my memory :) The same is true of the 'invalid media' message I described. The PS/2 computer would format the first unpunched 720K disk at 1.44MB but not a second one by answering yes to the prompt.
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Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:06:31 EDT

aurgathor posted : I thought the punching was from 720k to 1.44M, not from 1.44M to 2.88M.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:14:50 EDT

drslash posted : I also recall that the first IBM PS/2 PCs and the accompanying OS at the time would format an 'unpunched' 1.44MB disk to a capacity or 2.88MB when using the '/2.88' parameter (or similar) on the format command. When the OS prompted if another disk was to be formatted and yes was answered, then the OS issued an invalid media for drive message, indicating that the 'unpunched' 1.44MB disk could not be formatted to 2.88MB capacity.
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Save water...drink beer!
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#occupytheworkplace
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Obama...it's junior high school all over again!
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Democrats don't mind raising taxes because democrats don't pay taxes.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:06:39 EDT

drslash posted :

said by Mannus:

Does anyone remember punching a hole on the opposite side of the 1.44MB disk to make it a 2.88MB disk?

yes

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:04:27 EDT

Mannus posted : Does anyone remember punching a hole on the opposite side of the 1.44MB disk to make it a 2.88MB disk?

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:42:11 EDT

pandora posted :

said by urbanriot:

I've had good luck with Verbatim DVD+R's standing the (limited) test of time I've been using them, since the mid 00's.

I had some circa 1995 / 1996 Microsoft pressed (not burned) CD's and was cleaning the house. Prior to tossing them, checked to see if they seemed readable. A complete test was not done as these are 1x media, but the files seemed to be there on a quick check.

I've had mixed results with some older burned DVD's, one was left out in light for a few months, and needed data recovery (it was about 6 years old). Most of the pictures stored on it were recovered, but not all. So far, that was my only bad experience with an older (6 years old) burned DVD. I do not recall the maker. At the moment I'm using Philips DVD-R.
--
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand." - Milton Friedman"

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:37:47 EDT

pandora posted : Hi,
As best I can determine, the 100 and 200 year life expectancy of CD and DVD media report by NIST was published as NIST Special Publication 500-263 a PDF summary is online here - »www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cf···d=150372

There were a half dozen methodologies used to produce rapid aging, and about 10 test methodologies to test the consequence of aging. The project detail indicates all work stopped after 2006, and the results were not only incomplete but there were breakdowns of equipment and many assumptions made about the failure and its effect on the analysis being performed.

IMO the report is incomplete, testing stopped in 2006, and was never resumed. Several testing machines broke, how that affected testing wasn't investigated. Looking at the NIST spreadsheet data, there seem more questions than answers regarding the production of the report or why testing was never finished (which is unanswered to the best of my searching).

Media longevity tests by the optical media industry (and at least one of the NIST tests) seem to assume temperature as the only stress on media over time. The assumption also is made that temperature range can be controlled over the 100 to 200 year period within a few degrees. The 200 year mark can be hit using BLock Error Rate (BLER) test. Other tests produce different results. Even the 2006 NIST tests indicated very wide / unpredictable variation for the limited testing that was in progress before the plug was pulled on the project.

The international standards organization (ISO) has defined two methods of determining longevity of CD and DVD media. They are ISO 18921:2000 for CD-ROM media and ISO 18927:2002 for CD-R media.

The latter standard involves a 2 year test. How often does the same media, stay on the market, unmodified for 2 years? Production changes occur regularly. A sku may remain constant, but the dye, manufacturing process, and substrate materials may all change a lot over 2 years. At time of purchase without testing, we don't really have a "good" guess as to longevity of any particular media. We hope it'll last a long time, but we can't be certain.

A organization called Optical Disc Archive Test Committee (»www.odat.org ) was created to assess optical data longevity. They discuss the problems introduced in this thread in considerable detail. The problem for current optical, is not very different from the problem with 2.88 MB floppy technology.

The technology moves, and changes, not only the media, but the interfaces and write / read technology. Compatibility with legacy technology is not guaranteed or in many cases even practical.

Another issue brought up by a poster, regarding estimated longevity of data on media at 100 or 200 years, is the difference between a backup and an archive.

A backup, is for intermediate retrieval of something lost. An archive is for long term storage of data. Sarbanes-Oxley requires data be archived for 20 years, GLBA (aka the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) requires 10 years, the Patriot Act requires an archive for 20 years, HIPAA requires a 10 year archive.

Finally, I wind up at »www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/in···faq.html this is the part of our government which defines appropriate practices for data archives.

From that site I see the following -

CD/DVD experiential life expectancy is 2 to 5 years even though published life expectancies are often cited as 10 years, 25 years, or longer. However, a variety of factors discussed in the sources cited in FAQ 15, below, may result in a much shorter life span for CDs/DVDs. Life expectancies are statistically based; any specific medium may experience a critical failure before its life expectancy is reached. Additionally, the quality of your storage environment may increase or decrease the life expectancy of the media. We recommend testing your media at least every two years to assure your records are still readable.

Every 2 to 5 years (the limit determined by archive.gov), data must be migrated from old CD or DVD media to new and verified, to be within the definition the government archives suggests for best practices. These standards are likely important to any company or agency that may experience litigation and be required to produce digitally archived data.

This was an interesting thread. It brought up a number of issues to think about, starting with the 2.88 mb floppy.
--
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand." - Milton Friedman"

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:58:44 EDT

urbanriot posted : I store my archival discs vertically, as recommended, in the appropriate environmental conditions and my archived discs from the 90's are starting to degrade. Most of my discs from 1994, created with Kodak 'lifetime' discs, are exhibiting media read errors.

Many of my no-name discs from the late 90's and early 00's are a complete write-off (but I knew that buying them at the time).

I've had good luck with Verbatim DVD+R's standing the (limited) test of time I've been using them, since the mid 00's.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:04:42 EDT

pandora posted : THAT is interesting, thanks. For long term storage, any user, particularly companies, hospitals or government has to think not only about the media itself, and media storage (not too hot, not too cold, etc) but also the viability of long term devices to read media.
--
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand." - Milton Friedman"

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:58:48 EDT

Cheese posted : According to the "Care and Handling Guide for the Preservation of CDs and DVDs - A joint Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and NIST project" guide,

"Among the manufacturers that have done testing, there is consensus that, under recommended storage conditions, CD-R, DVD-R, and DVD+R discs should have a life expectancy of 100 to 200 years or more; CD-RW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM discs should have a life expectancy of 25 years or more. Little information is available for CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs (including audio and video), resulting in an increased level of uncertainty for their life expectancy. Expectations vary from 20 to 100 years for these discs.

"Few, if any, life expectancy reports for these discs have been published
by independent laboratories. An accelerated aging study at NIST estimated the life expectancy of one type of DVD-R for authoring disc to be 30 years if stored at 25�C (77�F) and 50% relative humidity. This testing for R discs is in the preliminary stages, and much more needs to be done."

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:57:50 EDT

pandora posted :

said by DC DSL:

Just give up.

No tangent. Just a different point of view. No need to insult anyone. We have no viable long term data storage technology imo for PC's at this time as the hardware the media requires tends to not live longer than 20 years, and the a lot of the media used (particularly burned DVD / CD's ) may not have a shelf life as long as the hardware used to burn it.

Please stop insulting me personally. Thanks.

As to 2.88 mb floppy drives, the expression a day late and a dollar short comes to mind. »idioms.thefreedictionary.com/day···ar+short
--
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand." - Milton Friedman"

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:43:46 EDT

berserken posted :

said by pandora:

When I searched, burned DVD's may have a readable life of between 2-5 years depending on the products used and storage.

Maybe something new:

said by berserken, here :

I've never trusted optical media for long-term storage.

There's something new (to me, at least) that promises long life in an optical disk.

M-DISK [att=1,r]

Overview
The M-DISC utilizes chemically stable and heat-resistant materials that are not used in any other DVD or optical disc! These materials cannot be overwritten, erased, or corrupted by natural processes. Data is stored on the M-DISC by physically altering the data layer and creating permanent voids or holes. This new method of burning data is specifically designed to make your data endure the next 1000 years.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:36:50 EDT

urbanriot posted :

said by Octavean:

Both, but mainly the drives. You probably lucked out and had yours replaced before they had so many issues. I had plenty of clients at the time who loved their SparQ drives but were SOL when they broke despite the drives still having warranty.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:13:59 EDT

DC DSL posted : Just give up. You went off on a tangent that had NOTHING to do with the point I made. Media degradation is not the point. If you knew anything of the subject I referred to, you would know that there are requirements for ensuring perpetuity of certain types of historical data. Instead, you want to ignore the fact that you contributed nothing relevant and hope that you can bamboozle everyone else into believing it as well. No. You do not get to do that.
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Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:49:22 EDT

pandora posted :

said by DC DSL:

said by pandora:

said by DC DSL:

You clearly did not understand what I was talking about. *Permanently unmodifiable* does not have anything do with longevity of the medium.

I assume if previously readable data becomes unreadable, it has been modified.

You're treading dangerously close to troll territory there.

Media degradation modifies content. I don't think there is a dispute about this. When I searched, burned DVD's may have a readable life of between 2-5 years depending on the products used and storage.

I would not assume burned DVD's are secure to hold data for 7 to 10 years, mostly due to degradation of the media. It is true a USB device is easy to modify, but my belief is degradation also modifies data. The intent is to point out at a consumer level, we don't have very good choices.

There is no trolling here. Just pointing out that we can't assume long term viability of just about any PC storage media.

I would point you here »www.pcworld.com/article/124312/article.html -

"Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," Gerecke says. "There are a few things you can do to extend the life of a burned CD, like keeping the disc in a cool, dark space, but not a whole lot more."

The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data "shifting" on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam.

"Many of the cheap burnable CDs available at discount stores have a life span of around two years," Gerecke says. "Some of the better-quality discs offer a longer life span, of a maximum of five years."

Distinguishing high-quality burnable CDs from low-quality discs is difficult, he says, because few vendors use life span as a selling point.

As to editing a read only drive ... I assume somewhere someone is able to modify firmware / software to try and modify data on a burnable (writeable via laser on a CD / DVD burner) closed disk marked as read only. Assuming the existing media is write only, I wonder if data destruction of supposed read only DVD's isn't possible. It's never been anything of a concern to me, but to assume someone couldn't write all one's to existing disk would seem to be a bit optimistic. Not that the data itself would be modified, just new data added to the existing could render the media unreadable.

Doing a quick search, I came across this - »www.ehow.com/how_7442372_erase-c···d_r.html

DVD-R or DVD-RAM discs work well for storing large files such as movies and backup files. Unlike rewritable DVD discs, DVD-R discs typically are suitable for burning information a single time. However, you may be able to delete items from a DVD-R disc, if necessary. Check the product specifications supplied with the disc before performing these steps to determine if erasing files will render the disc unusable.

Read more: How to Erase a DVD-R Disc | eHow.com »www.ehow.com/how_7271603_erase-d···FKB0RFi4

We may just have different perspectives about the long term viability of any storage media. I started with IT when punched cards and very large tapes were used to store data. A punched card reader would be hard to find, as would the old 360 era tape drive readers. Connecting an old tape drive using the IBM channel bus, could be problematic as well. Each tape drive required a controller. My experience with computers runs over 40 years. I've seen a lot of change.

Edit: Thinking about it, my first experience with data storage was on something called a Friden Flexowriter which used long strips of paper that was punched then later read. This was prior to my use of punch cards in college. Imagine trying to find a reader for that data today?
--
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand." - Milton Friedman"

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 09:55:43 EDT

DC DSL posted :

said by pandora:

said by DC DSL:

You clearly did not understand what I was talking about. *Permanently unmodifiable* does not have anything do with longevity of the medium.

I assume if previously readable data becomes unreadable, it has been modified.

You're treading dangerously close to troll territory there.
--
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Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 09:50:35 EDT

pandora posted :

said by DC DSL:

You clearly did not understand what I was talking about. *Permanently unmodifiable* does not have anything do with longevity of the medium.

I assume if previously readable data becomes unreadable, it has been modified.
--
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand." - Milton Friedman"

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 09:28:38 EDT

Gordo74 posted :

said by AlphaOne:

And that's the reason why I haven't got rid of my ZIP drive which happened to be in the once awesome Gateway 2000 Pentium II 300mhz, circa 2007. :D

2007? In 2007, I had a 3.2Ghz Athlon XP3200+ with 1GB of RAM and an 80GB HDD... I think you mean more 2002-2004 timeframe.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 08:55:34 EDT

Octavean posted :

said by urbanriot:

Right! And they released the notorious Sparq! If you owned a Sparq and had a few cartridges that worked, you should never, ever buy another cartridge or use someone else's as there were many bad disks that would break drives and the company was terrible for replacing them under warranty. Basically you buy the drive, buy 5 cartridges, cross your fingers and if they all work and the drive continues to work, that's it, use that combination forever.

I had my internal SyQuest SparQ drive replaced once under warranty which I recall being fairly easy. I only bought about 3 cartridges.

Were you referring to warranty replacements of the SparQ drive or the cartridges?

The cartridges were OK for the most part. I did have one that had some bad sectors but was able to work around it,…

Its funny how such things like Floppy drives, Zip drives, Jazz drives and SparQ drives just sort of fall into disuse without note.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 08:26:17 EDT

Cheese posted : Wasn't that the Orb?

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 08:07:46 EDT

DC DSL posted :

said by pandora:

said by DC DSL:

Unfortunately, flash is NOT acceptable as backup for applications requiring permanently unmodifiable "true" copies of data.

Nothing is permanent. Media storage devices change over time. Eventually the current DVD readers will be obsolete,

You clearly did not understand what I was talking about. *Permanently unmodifiable* does not have anything do with longevity of the medium.
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Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 00:04:03 EDT

aurgathor posted : I did have (and probably still have) a 44 Mb SyQuest drive and a few cartridges -- they were OK, but optical media and HDs got cheaper, and I never bought any more SyQuest drive. I think their products were reasonably good until they tried to cost reduce them.
--
Wacky Races 2012!

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 18:54:55 EDT

urbanriot posted : Right! And they released the notorious Sparq! If you owned a Sparq and had a few cartridges that worked, you should never, ever buy another cartridge or use someone else's as there were many bad disks that would break drives and the company was terrible for replacing them under warranty. Basically you buy the drive, buy 5 cartridges, cross your fingers and if they all work and the drive continues to work, that's it, use that combination forever.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:26:59 EDT

aurgathor posted :

said by urbanriot:

SyQuest?
--
Wacky Races 2012!

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:36:45 EDT

urbanriot posted :

said by AlphaOne:

I believe ZIP at some point contributed to the 2.88 demise.

No, Bournoulli came before Zip drives and there was another product I used to come across quite often that was external SCSI and I cant recall its name. It was popular on workstations (before Jaz came along).

I have 2.88 MB floppy drive around here and a Toshiba Superdisk / LS-120 drive which was intended as a 120 MB storage drive which read floppies too. They never took off due to Zip's existing popularity.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:08:18 EDT

AlphaOne posted : I believe ZIP at some point contributed to the 2.88 demise.
I still have about 2GB worth of 100mm zip disks.
And that's the reason why I haven't got rid of my ZIP drive which happened to be in the once awesome Gateway 2000 Pentium II 300mhz, circa 2007. :D

Re: What happened to 2.88MB Floppy Disks

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:26:10 EDT

jadinolf posted :

said by Dustyn:

I still have my ZIP drives... and disks. I remember they also suffered from a thing called "The Click Of Death". Thankfully neither of my units were affected.
I had the external parallel port version which still works to this day... along with an internal drive. The last operating system that supported these pieces of hardware natively, was Windows XP 64-bit Edition. I retired them after Vista and onwards. I could not get the external version to work in any later OS.

I still have two zip drives installed. They are for my Quicken backup.
--
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Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 11:34:10 EDT

Cheese posted : They aren't out anywhere, anytime soon :uhh:

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 10:12:18 EDT

pandora posted :

said by DC DSL:

Unfortunately, flash is NOT acceptable as backup for applications requiring permanently unmodifiable "true" copies of data.

Nothing is permanent. Media storage devices change over time. Eventually the current DVD readers will be obsolete, and it'll be difficult or nearly impossible to find one. DVD's can be easily shattered, and their life expectancy for data storage is not infinite. A burned DVD is going to have a much shorter life expectancy than a pressed DVD if the pressed DVD was made properly.

On modern PC's virtually all the first generation PC interfaces are gone. Hard drives have evolved over several interfaces and generations.

IIRC there was at one point a choice that users could make by controller type for RLL or MFM encoded storage on a hard drive. RLL gave more storage. My very first PC hard drive with RLL could supply 110 megabytes and cost several hundred dollars. I was told by the salesman it would never be full, that there would never be 110 megabytes of data to store on it.

Today I take pictures that are larger in MB than that drive on an under $300 camera.

As to the OP, 2.88 MB floppy drives never caught on, as traditional 1.44 MB floppy drives were dying when 2.88 was released. It was released too late and cost too much. Microsoft made a push to release software on CD's about the time 2.88 was trying to come out. I had a Microsoft developer account, and recall getting a 1x CD reader (no burner) for the amazingly low price of just over $200. The drive could hold 640 MB of data.

Instead of needing many floppy drives, one CD drive would work.

Today World of Warcraft requires 20 GB to install. We just download it as needed on new systems. Even the traditional DVD dual sided standard is insufficient to hold a game of this size. Blu-ray drives hold up to 50 GB, my guess is within a decade 50 GB will be too small.

Today I couldn't read an MFM or RLL drive from an old PC. Somewhere I have a USB floppy disk reader, it may be 2.88 MB, but it was never used.

Today's SATA will eventually be a dead storage technology and readers will be hard to find.
--
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand." - Milton Friedman"

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:53:38 EDT

Anonymous_ posted :

said by floydb1982:

For a while there it seemed that they made 2.88MB Floppy Drives yet stopped and went back to 1.44MB Floppy Disks. 2.88MB Floppy's hold twice as much data as a 1.44MB Floppy. Why didn't the 2.88MB Floppy's replace the 1.44MB Floppy's??? My dad had a 2.88MB Floppy Drive and yet he could never find any 2.88MB Floppy Disks but 1.44MB Floppy Disks only. Did they even make any 2.88MB Floppy Disks at all to go along with the 2.88MB Floppy Drive???

I had a 64MB floppy disk it used sony MS sold that sucker for 80$
Sony Memory Stick Floppy Disk Adaptor MSAC-FD2M

Re: What happened to 2.88MB Floppy Disks

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 17:09:33 EDT

n_w95482 posted : I have an external SCSI Zip drive in my closet that was given to me a few years ago. The last time I tried it with my old Mac, it worked fine. I also have another one (external parallel I think) at work, boxed and shrink-wrapped.
--
KI6RIT

Re: What happened to 2.88MB Floppy Disks

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 16:51:44 EDT

Octavean posted : Same here, I still have both my Zip drives (Parallel and IDE) as well as a 1GB SparQ drive.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 11:01:48 EDT

Dustyn posted : My computer doesn't have an internal 1.44MB floppy disk drive. However, I have an external USB drive in case I need it for some reason. It sees little to no use... but it's nice to have and easy to move around. The last computer I have that's still in use that actually has one built in is my Pentium 4 IBM ThinkCentre. If it were to break down, no biggie... I have like 10 spares sitting in a drawer.
--
Remember that cool hidden "Graffiti Wall" here on BBR? After the name change I became the "owner", so to speak as it became: Dustyn's Wall »[Serious] RIP

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 09:51:50 EDT

Jan Janowski posted : Have one 1.44Mb Floppy/Media Card disk on a server.... Used it as a floppy couple times to upgrade Bios... and to load disk controller driver during an OS install. That's the last time I ever used it as a floppy. Used as a Card Reader quite often, so I don't feel so bad....
--
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Re: What happened to 2.88MB Floppy Disks

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 07:22:35 EDT

DKS posted :

said by Dustyn:

I still have my ZIP drives...

I had both, as well. Long gone to computer recycling.
--
Need-based health care not greed-based health care.

Re: What happened to 2.88MB Floppy Disks

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 23:03:39 EDT

Dustyn posted : I still have my ZIP drives... and disks. I remember they also suffered from a thing called "The Click Of Death". Thankfully neither of my units were affected.
I had the external parallel port version which still works to this day... along with an internal drive. The last operating system that supported these pieces of hardware natively, was Windows XP 64-bit Edition. I retired them after Vista and onwards. I could not get the external version to work in any later OS.
--
Remember that cool hidden "Graffiti Wall" here on BBR? After the name change I became the "owner", so to speak as it became: Dustyn's Wall »[Serious] RIP

Re: What happened to 2.88MB Floppy Disks

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 21:52:29 EDT

DrStrange posted : Nobody was interested.

I used 155MB mini CD-RWs formatted using DirectCD [UDF format, read/write]. A mini CD-RW in a jewel case is the same size as a 3.5" floppy. They were much more plentiful and much less expensive than 2.88MB floppies, Zips or SuperDisks [120 or 240MB floptical, looked like an overweight floppy].

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 16:52:52 EDT

Dustyn posted : TIME WARP: »Looking to buy a 2.88MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 16:03:41 EDT

neonhomer posted :

said by HarryH3:

At the time, 1.44 MB floppy drives cost $20 or less. 2.88 MB floppy drives cost around $100. This created the chicken and egg scenario where there were not enough drives in the field to justify making the disks in large (and low-cost) quantity. Thus the drives AND the disks were priced absurdly and failed miserably in the marketplace. Then Iomega came out with the Zip drive 100 MB and the Jazz drive (1GB).

If I remember correctly, you could reformat a 1.44 disk as a 2.88 disk, similar to how one reformatted a 720K 5.25" to 1.2MB 5.25". It was just a gamble on whether it would hold your data or not...
--
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U is for Uranium...... Bombs...
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Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 21:00:22 EDT

DKS posted :

said by Aranarth:

I'm not presuming anything, this is actually what is happening.

Dialup is alive and well and living in rural areas.
--
Need-based health care not greed-based health care.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 14:48:34 EDT

Cthen posted : Price is what happened.

Later they came out with 120mb floppies around the time Zip Disks came out. The price of blank media was around $30 - $40 per disk for both. Compare that to the price of 10 cents per disk when it came to CD-R blank media which came out at that time as well and has more capacity, you have a no brainer on what consumers chose.
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"I like to refer to myself as an Adult Film Efficienato." - Stuart Bondek

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:01:34 EDT

DC DSL posted :

said by Aranarth:

I suppose one additional thing that is putting cd-rs and dvd-r in the dust bin of history is literally waste. Flash drives can be used and reused many more times and much more reliably and cost effectively than rd-rw and dvd-rw disks.

Unfortunately, flash is NOT acceptable as backup for applications requiring permanently unmodifiable "true" copies of data. Applications subject to HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, and a slew of other regulated activities must use backup that cannot be altered once laid down and removed from the host. So, until a new mainstream "write-once" storage technology emerges, recordable optical and even tape will persist.
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"Dance like the photo isn't being tagged; love like you've never been unfriended; and tweet like nobody is following."

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 11:39:22 EDT

Aranarth posted : I'm not presuming anything, this is actually what is happening.
(You can assume people who are using dropbox have high speed internet of course.)

Otherwise as I mentioned people are using USB flash drives and yes some of them are using external hd's if they need more space.

I suppose one additional thing that is putting cd-rs and dvd-r in the dust bin of history is literally waste. Flash drives can be used and reused many more times and much more reliably and cost effectively than rd-rw and dvd-rw disks.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 11:04:38 EDT

DKS posted :

said by Aranarth:

Cd-r's and DVD-r's are on the way out because of high speed internet (dropbox etc) and usb flash drives.

That presumes everyone has high speed internet, which is not true. With bandwidth caps, using "the cloud" is counter-intuitive. Just as well to back to a USB HD.
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Need-based health care not greed-based health care.

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:58:38 EDT

HarryH3 posted : At the time, 1.44 MB floppy drives cost $20 or less. 2.88 MB floppy drives cost around $100. This created the chicken and egg scenario where there were not enough drives in the field to justify making the disks in large (and low-cost) quantity. Thus the drives AND the disks were priced absurdly and failed miserably in the marketplace. Then Iomega came out with the Zip drive 100 MB and the Jazz drive (1GB).

Then another bit of magic came along... Cheap PC networking. Sneakernet was no longer required. :)

Make yourself a note to ask a similar question about Intel's Thunderbolt 10 years from now. They have it and the cables it requires priced at a similarly absurd price point. I forsee it failing also. :(

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:15:40 EDT

DC DSL posted :

said by Aranarth:

The only time I burn anything anymore is if the machine I'm working on cannot boot off of a usb stick or I'm making an hd image or I'm burning an iso.

I only burn for protected/read-only distribution, point-in-time/audit backups, or archiving.
--
"Dance like the photo isn't being tagged; love like you've never been unfriended; and tweet like nobody is following."

Re: What happend to 2.88MB Floppy Disk's

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:01:24 EDT

Aranarth posted : Basically what happened to 2.88 floppy drives was zip disks (100mb) and more importantly CD-R's. (650 to 750mb)

Cd-r's and DVD-r's are on the way out because of high speed internet (dropbox etc) and usb flash drives.

The only time I burn anything anymore is if the machine I'm working on cannot boot off of a usb stick or I'm making an hd image or I'm burning an iso.