January monthly poll

For the month of January and the new year we thought it would be interesting to see when the last time you used a floppy diskette. With all new computers no longer coming pre-installed with a floppy disk drives and programs created over the last few years only being available in a disc format there are not many if any reasons users today would be using a floppy diskette. If you have used a floppy diskette recently feel free to talk about what you used it for and any good/bad experiences you had with it. Also feel free to talk about what you're using as a substitute for a floppy diskette, e.g. thumb drives, CD-R discs, etc.

All past monthly polls and results can also be found on the Computer Hope poll page.

[Global Moderator]

I last used a couple of Floppies about two years ago.
I had a box full and I wanted to see what was on them.

I've only used one for storage once before, back in Primary school. We were all given one to store our work.

I now use Flash Drives for transferring files, and CD/DVDs for storage.

I used a floppy just over a week ago.
Was trying to make it bootable so I could clone a drive, turned out the floppy controller was actually slightly faulty so it wouldn't boot from a disk, but it would work once within Windows.
Prior to that, in the last few years I've used floppies in college a few months ago (Win98 boot disks, to install Windows 2000 from a caddy drive) and before that, in junior school when we each had a floppy with our name on it to save work on.  That's, what, 7 years ago?
Now, all my work is saved on my USB flash drives and various hard disks.

[Moderator]

Restored an Acronis image to a HDD this week using a bootable floopy...

 

[CH Queen]

Never.

I used one today to copy some files from our old Windows 98 computer.
I usually use a flash drive to copy files but our Windows 98 computer cannot use flash drives.

Three days ago, only use Floppy's for Bootables now....

I use floppys all the time for transferring small files between home and school, I have a usb floppy drive for use with my computer. Better than using an expensive flash disk, no-one will care if I lose or break a flopy disk.

I also use them for transferring files to my win98 computer, as well as boot disks for computers I am repairing (although normally just to get the cd drive going so I can put an OS through it)

In 2004 I purchased a HP as my three year old Gateway "died".  A "computer geek" I know said he tried everything to get it free of viruses but to no avail.  After I set my HP up, I tried shoving my floppy disks where ever I thought they might go.  I read and reread all the directions and set up.  Finally I called Best Buy and the young man very nicely told me it didn't have one.  I was very shocked as all my stuff was on about 100 floppy disks.  My daughters still talk about that situation.

probably about 2 or so years ago i would say

[Global Moderator]

probably about 2 or so years ago i would say

What did you do?

i changed my mind (and vote) it was over a year because i was trying to make some sort of boot disc with a floppy and i was putting flobbys in and seeing what was on em

i've used them more then 3 years ago but i dont remember for what 

Who of you used bigger than 3½-inch floppy ? I've never seen bigger 

[Moderator]

In 2004 I purchased a HP as my three year old Gateway "died".  A "computer geek" I know said he tried everything to get it free of viruses but to no avail.  After I set my HP up, I tried shoving my floppy disks where ever I thought they might go.  I read and reread all the directions and set up.  Finally I called Best Buy and the young man very nicely told me it didn't have one.  I was very shocked as all my stuff was on about 100 floppy disks.  My daughters still talk about that situation.

Priceless ! !

       

I don't even own any floppy disks anymore. I do keep a USB floppy drive as well as a normal internal floppy drive around the shop, just in case they're ever needed though.