Dell saying bye to floppy disk drives

Computers & Internet Forum

In what may be the wave of the future, Dell Computer said goodbye to the past on Thursday when it announced it would stop making floppy disk drives standard equipment on its higher end desktop personal computers.

Austin, Texas-based Dell, the No. 2 personal computer maker, said floppy drives had been overtaken by technologies offering greater storage capacity and would become an option on its Dimension 8250 models.

Other Dell models may lose the floppy by end of the year, depending on customer response, Dell spokesman Lionel Menchaca said.

Alternatives offer more storage
He said the decision was made because technologies such as USB flash memory offer much more storage capacity than floppies and are more useful with today's mega-memory computers.

"You insert it right into the USB port, and your computer reads it just like it would read a floppy drive. The benefit is, you've got much more capacity -- instead of just 1.44 megabytes, at the low end you have 16 megabytes."

The floppy drive has been the most widely used method of transferring data between computers since the dawn of the computer age.

The first 5.25-inch floppy drive was introduced by Shugart Associates in 1976 to be compatible with International Business Machines mainframe computers, then made the transition to IBM's early personal computers.

Sony introduced the 3.5-inch diskette in 1980, and by the early 1990s the 3.5-inch floppy, with a capacity of 1.44 megabytes, had become the standard method of data transfer in PCs.

Tens of millions of computer users are familiar with "the a: prompt" as the symbol for the floppy diskette.

Research leads to decision
In the early days of computing, hard drives of 10 to 20 megabytes, the capacity of a few floppy disks, were common, and the size of computer programs was often small enough to fit on one or two floppies.

But even today's less expensive computers include hard drives one hundred times larger, and most programs are too large to run or store on a manageable number of floppy drives.

Menchaca said the decision to eliminate the floppy drive came following focus group research with customers.

"When we would ask the question to people 'do you need a floppy,' the answer to that question would be yes," he said.

"But when we asked them how long it had been since they used it, they would say six months, a year. Many couldn't remember the last time they used the floppy drive."

Apple leads the way
Dell says the floppy will first be phased out on higher end computers because those users are more likely to be utilizing flash memory, portable hard drives, and other alternative portable storage devices.

Apple Computer stopped putting floppy drives in Macintosh computers several years ago, but other PC firms, including No. 1 personal computer maker Hewlett-Packard, still offer them.

It's about time....

I never used floppies... to unreliable... you never knew when they would become corrupt. Besides, when you're primary content is graphic,web, or video design, a floppy disk is too small.

I still have about 250 or so floppy's, Most of which sit in a box gathering dust. However there is still many times when I need to use one for computer troubleshooting or to fix problems.

What I would like to see is a memory card instead of a floppy not just on a USB port memory card adapter. Because you can't boot off of a USB device. At least not yet.

SD memory can hold up to 256mb maybe more. Then the cost of that memory will come down.

I always boot from CD... my only use for floppies is a) as windows password disk; and b) glued together to make paperweights. I agree with your memory card thoughts, though.

Some of the older computers can't boot from CD. But for most of them it's just a bios flash.

Actually, there is an easy solution which allows your old computer to boot from CDs.

Throw it out the window and buy a new one!

Not everyone or a business with a lot of computers can afford to just throw out their computers. I'm sure one day everyone will have a new computer but unfortunately that is not the case.

Ron, any business without USB capabilities needs to seriously re-evaluate their position in the technological scheme of things...

I've worked with major corporations like GM, Cincinnati Financial, Ford Consumer Credit, Bellsouth, Cosco. And not one and I repete not even one of those companies used USB. There were a few laptop users who used it but for the most part not. Now if you ask me if it's something that will be used in the future, sure.

Most major corporation haven't even been on PC's for that long. These companies that I worked for moved off of dumb terminals on in the past maybe 3 years or so. And the majority still use a PC like a dumb terminal for a lot of things. These users don't connect anything to these PC's, Hell they don't even use their floppy drive, and the CD Rom is used to listen to music while they work.

My goodness... It sounds like you think I'm serious in all of this....

My window was dirty so I couldn't see the expression on your face.

Well I will say this: As soon as an alternative option came, I stopped using floppies. For reasons stated above, I used CDs and USB memory. Many people, and companies, do not have the luxury that I do. This I understand. But technology is changing every day. It's a USB eat Floppy world out there, and I'm only advising that no one use floppies because floppies are horrible. However, I realize that not all companies or people can buy a new computer every time a new something comes out, and they shouldn't sweat it. All I'm saying is that I support Dell removing floppies from their computers. Any NEW computers will have CD-RW capabilities, and the world will slowly and gradually begin to see the light.

I have eight 100 MB Zip Disks, and three 250 MB Zip Disks. That's 1,550 MB. How many floppy disks would I need to have that?

There are 3 types of floppy disks. The first time isn't used much anymore but you can still buy them.

720 kb
1.44 mb
120 mb (takes a special floppy drive which can read and write to this type of disk)

Mosts floppy drives will handle the 1.44 mb and the 720 kb. You can identify the first two with the little square holes. The 720 kb has one hole and is used for write protect. The 1.4 mb has 2 holes one is for write protect and the other tells the drive that it is a high density 1.4 mb disk. They used to make a device to drill a second hole into a 720 kb floppy in essence making it a 1.4 mb. I tried it once and was unable to format the diskette properly. I think that now manufactures use it to market inferior diskettes.

The 120 mb diskettes and technology developed by Imation (Formerly 3M) is called the LS 120 drive. You can usually identify these diskettes by the sliding metal cover. While the 720kb and the 1.44 mb diskettes have a rectangle cover the LS 120 diskettes have a triangle cover.

You would need (70) 1.44mb floppies for each 100mb Zip Disk and (174) 1.44mb floppies for each 250mb Zip Disk. That equates to needing (872) 1.44mb floppy diskettes for the same amount of space of the Zip Diskettes.

Now let's talk about Flash drives. You can now get a 1.0 GB Flash drive and I presume that there will be a 2.0 GB in the near future. Imagine taking your entire operating system (Windows XP) and all your data with you on your keychain. I would be able to take my Webserver with all my sites and my email server, on one 1.0GB keychain.

My main 'gripe' lets say is the fact that who really works with file sizes smaller than 1.4mb - its positively pre-historic. Im a graphic designer and most of the files I work with are min 50mb - you see my problem - thanks god for CD burners yes? I havent used a floppy in years - obsolete

I say - banish them to hell - ALL of them!!! - UPGRADE DUDES!!!

This industry is moving so fast it's unbelievable. They already have a 2GB flash drive. Any guesses when the 3GB or 5GB are coming out?


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Price: $849.00
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Floppy disks are such a pain and are very unreliable aswell as fragile. Everytime i take work from home to uni it says i have to re-format the disk

One Memory Stick !

I got a dell dimenson 2400 and it never even came with a floppy drive and i got in like last november.