reccomend a usb floppy drive

**craigmodius** · June 8th, 2004, 05:33 PM

yep, got 7 laptops with usb ports, but no floppy.

are all the usb floppys the same or is there a magical, mystical, geek approved one I should consider?

TIA

**InTheWayBoy** · June 8th, 2004, 10:05 PM

As far as I have tested, they are all about the same...hopefully you have WinME, Win2000, or WinXP as they have all the drivers already. Win98SE will work but needs drivers...anything earlier and you are S.O.L.

I've seen these new 2X USB Floppy drives that claim (Duh) two times the transfer rate...I just instinctively don't buy that and would caution against them. But I am hopefully wrong cause faster floppies is a great idea!

**gazzak** · June 9th, 2004, 04:01 AM

Have you considered a USB stick instead? For about the same price as a usb floppy you can get a 128MB stick. These are plug and play with W2K and XP, bootable, secure and hold more than 100 floppys worth of data!

I now wonder how I survived without mine.

**corturbra** · June 9th, 2004, 04:04 AM

Originally Posted by gazzak

Have you considered a USB stick instead? For about the same price as a usb floppy you can get a 128MB stick. These are plug and play with W2K and XP, bootable, secure and hold more than 100 floppys worth of data!

I now wonder how I survived without mine.

Only problem being is they don't work that well with 98.... but I agree how did we ever cope without them? Rather than carry demo music on Cd's now for potential singers, I check if they have 2k or above on their PC's and take the stick instead.....

**confus-ed** · June 9th, 2004, 04:22 AM

Originally Posted by gazzak

Have you considered a USB stick instead? For about the same price as a usb floppy you can get a 128MB stick. These are plug and play with W2K and XP, bootable, secure and hold more than 100 floppys worth of data!

I now wonder how I survived without mine.

That'll be the same or less money, or you could think a bit more money & get a usb cd instead & get yourself something much more practical than Floppies !! (assuming the laptops can boot from that too, though if they can manage it from floppy usb, I can't see why not - & of course you can make a cd emmulate any floppy just with a lot more actual storage capacity) ..

Personally anyway I can think of better things to spend money on than a usb floppy

**TechZ** · June 9th, 2004, 04:47 AM

USB drives are a lot smaller/faster/data is much more safer on them and a friend of mine actually (accidently) washed his and it still works

**confus-ed** · June 9th, 2004, 04:58 AM

Originally Posted by TechZ

USB drives are a lot smaller/faster/data is much more safer on them and a friend of mine actually (accidently) washed his and it still works

So huh ? .. whatever the interface, the floppy itself is still the same, sure you can 'potentially' do all that 'messing about' & beat the 1.44 mb barrier, but then any floppy produced that way is only readable in 'our' drive ..

& washed ??? surley you are having me on ?

(floppies are coated in metal oxide to make the 'magnets' that hold the info & therefore 'rust' {which is usually why they fail} so washing them has got to be a bad idea !!

)

**craigmodius** · June 9th, 2004, 05:56 AM

Originally Posted by gazzak

Have you considered a USB stick instead? For about the same price as a usb floppy you can get a 128MB stick. These are plug and play with W2K and XP, bootable, secure and hold more than 100 floppys worth of data!

I now wonder how I survived without mine.

No can do, although they run XP and do have a built in SD memory card reader, the one program I'm looking at putting on there kinda requires a floppy. It is a program for scoring someone's sensory perception for Physical Therapy/Occupational Therapy.

And the company that makes the software sends you the floppy disc and they put controls in the program on the disc to make sure you pay per patient you are scoring. (as I understand it)

So the simplest solution is going to be to get 1 floppy drive for the dept. to use if needed. Plus it never hurts to have one around.

If they are all basically the same I think I'll find the smallest lightest one

thanks for the input everyone

**craigmodius** · June 9th, 2004, 06:00 AM

Originally Posted by confus-ed

& washed ??? surley you are having me on ?

(floppies are coated in metal oxide to make the 'magnets' that hold the info & therefore 'rust' {which is usually why they fail} so washing them has got to be a bad idea !!

)

rust takes time, he's saying washed once and then (after drying) tested to retrieve the data

Maximum PC performed these sorta punishment tests (drop tests, wash tests, etc.) on a buncha usb keys and were able to still get data from some of them.