7 ms·
Nothing in modern computing compares to the audible and kinesthetic satisfaction of the ka-chunk of a 3.5 inch floppy being inserted into a drive.
by causi 4y ago
Nothing in modern computing compares to the audible and kinesthetic satisfaction of the ka-chunk of a 3.5 inch floppy being inserted into a drive.
- blamarvt 4y agoAnd nothing makes your heart sink faster than the rhythmic sound of trying over and over to read the same bad disk.
- myth_drannon 4y agoOnce my family drove to visit my cousins. I brought a newly bought box of floppies just in case they had some interesting things to copy from... and forgot it in the car with summer heatwave outside. It was a very painful lesson, so many badblocks.
- bornfreddy 4y agoI didn't know the temperature mattered? Otherwise with new floppies I always reformatted and checked for bad blocks first. Some of the series were very bad quality.
- myth_drannon 4y agonah, some just melted. It was on the front seat with no shadow in Israeli +40C degrees heat.
- nine_k 4y agoThe wisdom of 1990s was that if you have one copy of data on your disk, you may as well have zero copies. It became more pronounced in late 1990s when disks became more ubiquitous and the race for the lower price likely made them less reliable. After that the idea of backing things up, no matter where they are recorded initially, feels very natural.
- Tijdreiziger 4y agoThat's still the wisdom. The 3-2-1 backup rule: keep at least 3 copies of your data on at least 2 storage media, and keep at least 1 copy offsite.
- vardump 4y ago> The wisdom of 1990s was that if you have one copy of data on your disk, you may as well have zero copies. Still true.
- daveslash 4y agoAlong similar lines: If you haven't tested or dry-run your restore procedures, you may as well not have backups either. That applies more for things like SQL databases and the like, more than personal files on disk. But yeah.... if you haven't tried to restore your database or other data repository from a backup file that you've squirreled away, then you effectively don't have a backup either.
- noizejoy 4y agoI’d slightly amend the analogy into “an untested backup is akin to having a lottery ticket for your backups”. Maybe you win or maybe you don’t. Old floppies are also like lottery tickets in that sense.
- flotzam 4y agoddrescue trying to read a scratched DVD from a public library comes close. Horrifying sounds as you contemplate your drive wearing itself down, copy progress ETA 47:32:13
- amatecha 4y agoThe secret for scratched CDs/DVDs I learned way too late in the game was that you can actually polish the clear plastic underside with Brasso (brass polish) and a lens cloth. I restored sooo many optical discs this way. It really works!
- JKCalhoun 4y agoYeah, that, "Any second it will give up and shoot the disk back out" thought.
- gildas 4y agoAt that moment, I took the knife next to the computer to insert gently the blade into the drive above the diskette. It worked most of the time :p.
- drewzero1 4y agoGlad to hear I'm not the only one who routinely stabbed my computer! I used to keep a butter knife by my iMac to help eject CDs. I had the first slot-loading model and the rubber eject rollers they used seemed to lose their grip after a while.
- thesuitonym 4y agotik tik tik tik tik
- JohnTHaller 4y agoEspecially post-pandemic when most of the stuff in the theater is dead and there's only a single backup of the lighting board programming on a 3.5" floppy with a broken dust protector. Manually spinning it and blowing the dust out brought it back enough to save it after our first improv jam that took place with fluorescents on for the first 15 minutes while I manually programmed a single wash on a dimmer.
- rawoke083600 4y agoThat 'stutter-of-failure' :D
- deltarholamda 4y agoThis, and the click of death coming from a Zip disk that meant 100MB of Something Important had just entered Valhalla.
- Centmo 4y agoEspecially when you're on floppy #25 of OS/2 Warp.
- forinti 4y agoA friend of mine had his first job installing Oracle from floppies. I'm not sure what the actual count was, but we would joke about him installing disk 1 of 99...
- bluedino 4y agoFirst job I had was installing SCO off tapes and that was the year 2000
- dugmartin 4y agoThanks, that brought back a vivid memory I didn't even know was still knocking around my brain!
- stordoff 4y agoI recall installing Office from ~35 floppy discs, and finding that one of the discs in the 20s was unreadable after what felt like an eternity. The installation still completed after I skipped it though, so presumably it only contained some optional feature I never ended up using.
- noizejoy 4y agoOr floppy #10 of Mark of the Unicorn’s DAW. Nervous times they were!
- throwaway742 4y agoAbort, Retry, Fail?
- Gibbon1 4y agoWith CP/M if you left the door open all your work was lost like tears in the rain.
- acheron 4y agoI've thought the same thing about those big power switches on AT and older motherboards/power supplies where you actually shut the power off.
- cogman10 4y agoThe 5 1/4 disks, IMO, had a superior kinesthetic. A much more solid thunk sound when being inserted and a deeper tone while being read. Enjoy, the sounds of floppies :D [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnFQZa8SKP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnFQZa8SKP8
- Koshkin 4y agoThe ones that I remember had a locking lever which barely made any sound at all. https://i.stack.imgur.com/8D9f1.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/8D9f1.jpg
- Doxin 4y agoSome of em were spring loaded to where if it got past halfway it'd snap shut all the way. Flicking one of those makes a good noise.
- p1mrx 4y agoThe seeking at 1:48[1] sounds like Hall and Oates[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnFQZa8SKP8&t=108s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnFQZa8SKP8&t=108s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY27wmTZwyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY27wmTZwyg
- linker3000 4y agoThe 8 inchers were a nightmre in some mechanisms (whichever ones Intel used in their MDS systems); slide 'em in too quickly and with a bit of passion (!?) and they'd catch on something, so if you weren't paying attention you'd fold them over and make a crease. Bye bye data!
- raintrees 4y agoAh, but 8" floppies made better frisbees - personal experience :) I used to work in the disk duplication industry, both at a copier (DisCopyLabs) and then later at the robot manufacturer, Mountain Computer, which was eventually bought by Nakamichi and combined with Trace, our competitor. We used to be able to sail those suckers over the building on Wyatt Drive to the San Thomas Expressway... Next person to work on roof equipment probably had a curious experience, many discs that did not make it all the way likely scattered all over the roof.
- wintorez 4y agoNot even a modem handshake noise?
- traceroute66 4y ago> Nothing in modern computing compares to the audible... Ahem, cough, dial-up modem handshake. That is all I have to say on the subject.
- martopix 4y ago> In modern computing
- stinkytaco 4y agoSurely the floppy disk is not more modern than the modem? They started to die around the same time, if I recall.
- quickthrower2 4y agoAgreed, I remember dial up using an AOL CD. And CDR was around the corner.
- Dylan16807 4y agoBoth are not modern. I don't think the original post was trying to imply that floppies are modern.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bornfreddy 4y agoHow about the constant fan noise when having ESET [0] installed on a Windows laptop then? [0] if you don't have ESET at hand, I guess any "good" antivirus would do.
- linker3000 4y agoBah - font kerning issue (keeming).
- phoboslab 4y agoTrue. I'd put it on the same level as connecting XLR cables. MiniDiscs (and to a lesser extent) UMDs were maybe the last examples of such satisfying mechanics. We are moving towards a solid state future where no user interaction directly drives mechanics. Physical media has largely disappeared, few cars are sold with a manual transmission and everything is wireless. Maybe folding phones will fill the gap. For now, at least my toaster remains!
- grishka 4y agoModern computers are so silent that you have no idea whether they're working hard or it's just someone doing things on the UI thread that don't belong there.
- daveslash 4y agoI also really liked the audible and kinesthetic satisfaction of the 5.25 floppies.
- quickthrower2 4y agoMaybe the pinging of a modem? You can tell from the tune how well it is doing!