Why are we still using disks?

mouse · 03-09-2003, 08:22 PM

In a day that I can buy a 128mb Sony memory stick half the size of my little finger [most of that packaging] Why is it we're still using mechanical disks rather than EEPROM?

Seems to me that reduced access time would be made up for easily using raid-esque arrays. The drives wouldn't have mechanical parts so wouldn't make the noise conventional hard disks do.

Maybe I'm missing something.

Thejavaman1 · 03-09-2003, 08:41 PM

cost cost cost. Hard drives are cheap ($1 for 1GB) EEPROM is expensive (~ $250 a GB). At those prices, the 80GB hard drive in my computer would have cost $20000, 50 times as expensive as the most expensive part in my computer (Radeon 9700Pro, the first week it came out)

Alex Vincent · 03-09-2003, 10:22 PM

Heh, when I saw this subject, I thought he meant floppies...

I for one can't see why we still use these dinky little 3.5in square disks anymore, except maybe for documents we write when we don't have an Internet connection (and I am very familiar with how that feels). You certainly can't move a lot of programs on them.

joh6nn · 03-10-2003, 12:00 AM

i'll never give up my floppy drive. NEVER!

because sometimes, i just don't want to use a whole cd, for something that's less than a meg.

cg9com · 03-10-2003, 06:53 AM

wheres a floppy that actually holds something.
floppy is such a cool word.

i guess if its cheaper for disks then they will win out over something like EEPROM

Roy Sinclair · 03-10-2003, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by cg9com
wheres a floppy that actually holds something.
floppy is such a cool word.

i guess if its cheaper for disks then they will win out over something like EEPROM

The IOMEGA Zip drive holds up to 150mb per disk, too bad the word IOMEGA on any hardware is the same as saying "This is a piece of garbage!".

If you want smaller and more portable though you should really look at the 3 inch CDs and the credit card CDs. They also hold a fair amount of data but are more easily slipped into a pocket than a full size CD.

cg9com · 03-10-2003, 05:30 PM

i meant, a 3.5 floppy that will fit into any regular drive, but holds more than its 1.44 limit ( or whatever it is ).
without actually buying a different product.
(scared of going off topic)

scroots · 03-10-2003, 07:12 PM

you can get an LS120 floppy drive or something, similair to floppy disk drive, same slot and they hold 8 megs a disk

I will find out the propper name if necessary.
scroots

Roy Sinclair · 03-10-2003, 07:44 PM

The biggest problem with alternatives to floppy drives is that they need to be universal. You've got to be able to count on being able to carry a disk to any other computer and still be able to read it. The floppy disk is the closest we have to that with the CD/RW drives being the next closest. The LS120, ZIP and other alternative drives that were developed worked but were unable to unseat the floppy drive initially and by the time things grew too large for distribution on floppies the CD drives had taken over.

The next best bet for replacing the floppy are the USB connect drives. You can get them from full size, full speed hard drives down to the Flash memory "thumb" drives. For people who need to "sneakernet" things from one place to another those may be their best bet since USB is also close to being universal these days.

cg9com · 03-10-2003, 08:20 PM

no chance of a floppy ever being developed that will fit the same drive but hold more?

mouse · 03-10-2003, 08:24 PM

You can get floppy adapters for flash memory and memory stick's enabling their use in floppy drives. Doesn't speed up read/write times though. Floppies suck, nice that Dell are rebelling against them too.

cg9com · 03-10-2003, 08:45 PM

floppies owned me back in the day.

Roy Sinclair · 03-10-2003, 09:37 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by cg9com
no chance of a floppy ever being developed that will fit the same drive but hold more?

I wouldn't say no chance but don't hold your breath. Too many of the alternatives were stymied by either not being compatible with the floppy (requiring an additional drive bay), too much proprietary technology (greedy developer of the technology refusing to license or wanting to much $ for a license) or was simply too expensive during a time when the cost of the system was a major selling point. The alternative drive's capacity still fell short and inexpensive CD/R and CD/RW drives came along before any of them had a chance to become an expected part of a new system.

Itll likely be the next upgrade (Post DVD/RW ?) before another drive will have a chance to be as easily portable as a 3 and 1/2 inch floppy. Honestly, it's surprising how many systems still ship with floppy drives. Most people buying a new system these days will never use the floppy drive.

cg9com · 03-11-2003, 02:19 AM

i wouldnt say that, they are pretty handy, i can keep a website on one floppy.
yea now instead of going for the floppy, its just as easy to burn a CD that will hold much more, but i guess theres still some use for them otehrwise they would be gone?

i know im not the only one who uses them ...

Roelf · 03-11-2003, 06:34 AM

I use floppies frequently. When i go to a customer, and have to get some of his files on my laptop, most of the times i use a floppy. My laptop has no cd burner, at the customer site its most of the times faster to copy some floppies than find a pc with a cd burner. Its also not common practice to hook up my laptop to their network. Sometimes i will install a parallel cable to my machine and one of their machines, but then i have to be able to install some software, or change the windows installation to allow direct cable connect. Most of the times, the network rights of the client don't allow that. So floppies are my best friend