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Say Goodbye to the Floppy Disk

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Floppy

In 1981, Sony gave the world the 3.5” floppy disk. For better or worse, it became the de facto standard for moving data between PC’s for nearly 2 decades.

Next year – 30 years later, Sony will finally cease production of these relics of storage media.

Why am I posting this farewell on a gaming site?  While I certainly won’t miss the bloody things – a meagre 1.44mb storage space and awfully unreliable – I was given access to some of my favourite childhood games through this medium. Notables include Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, Doom,  X-wing, TIE Fighter and Wing Commander and many, many others. Ridiculously easy to copy, they were used for widespread PC game piracy – something that may have actually contributed to gaming becoming  so promulgated.

Thanks to early Pc game pirates, we have this :

Floppy discs have also caused me one of the most frustrating experiences any gamer can have. finally reaching disc 32 of a 33 disc install, only to be confronted with:

>Data error reading Drive B:
>Abort, Retry, Fail? _

While some people in IT doing RAID installations and motherboard firmware upgrades may still need them, the rest of us are finally able to say goodbye to the format. What then are your fondest – and worst memories of the things?

[Image courtesy of Steven Debardelaben]

Last Updated: April 28, 2010

9 Comments

  1. pantsula

    April 28, 2010 at 13:37

    BMX and a backpack full of these…

    Reply

  2. Abe

    April 28, 2010 at 13:48

    The number of times I saved a school project only to get to school and get an error 🙁
    Good Ridance! my flashdrive has been through the wash several times and still works :wub:

    Reply

  3. WitWolfyZA

    April 28, 2010 at 14:05

    It always sucked when you saved something on your computer to take it to another PC, with the only option saying “Format disc”

    Reply

  4. darthdad

    April 28, 2010 at 14:11

    I thought they were called ‘stiffy discs’? The old ‘floppy’ discs were 3,5″. And before that I used to work with a 5&1/4″. Man they was some good times…….. :tongue:

    Reply

    • bokka1

      April 28, 2010 at 14:21

      The 5.25″ was called floppys and the smaller 3.5″ stiffys but I think they use floppy now as a generic term. I even used ones that were bigger than the 5.25 floppys.

      Reply

      • darthdad

        April 28, 2010 at 14:32

        You are quite correct bokka1.
        I am getting too old. I think Red Dead Redemption looks futuristic :silly:

        Reply

  5. eXp

    April 28, 2010 at 16:09

    Many a school project saved on them. You could also tell how close it was to being full depending on the noise the drive was making. 🙂

    Also, can you say Floppy? :pinch:

    Reply

  6. Q121

    April 29, 2010 at 08:05

    I know that Schneider electric licence transfers still require you to use a stiffy disk… painfully annoying as NO laptops have them any more…. Also most kuka robots programs are transfered using stiffy disk… :pirate:

    Reply

  7. Gavin Mannion

    April 29, 2010 at 09:43

    That video is seriously disturbing

    Reply

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