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What's the actual problem with floppy disks? Is the system not performing the task it was designed for?
by 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
What's the actual problem with floppy disks? Is the system not performing the task it was designed for?
- Yossarrian22 1y agoFloppies aren’t manufactured anymore
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoDoes that matter? Manufacturing them ain't hard and current supplies are big enough to sustain the small demand. What matters is that I can buy floppies and will be able to for a very long time if not indefinitely.
- pg_bot 1y agoWe are running out of floppy disks. No one makes them anymore, and there is a finite supply of existing inventory.
- topspin 1y agoWhile you can still get high quality floppy disks, there is nothing wrong with them. You must handle them properly and keep them clean, but that's only a problem for children and idiots. When demand falls and they are no longer profitable to manufacture at high quality levels, low quality media dominate the supply and you have problems. I watched this happen with floppy media. When floppy disks were common in the 80's you had great quality disks from top tier Japanese manufacturers at low cost. Media failure was rare and you could rely on a disk day after day for years. Then, as demand for floppies dropped, and these manufacturers fobbed off legacy products to low cost manufacturers, floppy media became terrible. By the mid to late 90's, floppy media bought retail was very unreliable. For a brief time I was salvaging stacks of disks that came with commercial software because the software vendors were still able to secure good media, while the retail blanks you found in stores was just this side of e-waste. I used them with expensive instruments that had integral (high quality) floppy drives, long after PCs stopped using them.
- stackedinserter 1y agoWhat's the actual problem with anything old? Why do you ever buy and use new things?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoNothing if it still does the job. I buy new things when they can't do their job anymore or I have a new problem to solve. My desktop and car are over 12 years old.
- stackedinserter 1y agoWhy don't you use floppy disks then?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoI've answered that. Because you can't read and the problems that I need to solve have changed.
- stackedinserter 1y agoWhat are those "problems" that you can't solve with floppy disks? Just use more of them. They still work, remember?