Where Floppy Disks are Still in Use

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[randalllindenmayer]

So he basically has a monopoly on the floppy disk business because he's the only one left. Smart man.

[oakeydokey]

This guy is such a cool dude. You can't not feel happy from watching this video.

[Waccoon]

The sad thing is that the quality of the magnetic material really tanked in the 2000's, so used disks from the 80's are generally way more reliable than new old stock. It depends on the type of magnetic material used and how well-aligned the original track formatting is. 8" disks from the 70's last practically forever, so indeed they are great to use for legacy applications, rather than trying to upgrade to flash storage or even hardware emulators. Yes, the government still uses them, and no, they are no joke! They work really well and last for decades.

I have an Amiga 1200 I bought in 1992, and after all these years almost every floppy disk from that era still works great. Newer blank disks (cirra 2005) I picked up as backups are almost all dead or unusable fresh out of the box. Contrary to what you might think, specialty manufacturing usually has much lower quality standards than mass-produced products, so it's hard to get reliable floppy disks these days even from new, sealed packages from a few years ago. I'll never part with my old 880K disks.

Buying used disks isn't a bad idea, really. Cheers to this guy!

[radioactiveskull]

I’m an IT assistant at a giant combustion company with a lot of engineers and some of those engineers still use DOS and floppy disks for certain programs.

[lhl]

I work with commercial jets and it was only within the last couple of years that we switched from floppy disks as an update delivery medium. Now we use a specialised portable computer (looks like a 12 inch tablet, but it's 3 inches thick) that holds all the latest software updates for the different computers on the various aircrafts we have.
It always made me giggle a little to see that floppy drive in the cockpit.
Quick Access Recording (QAR) is now done wireless (GSM or LTE) but used to be PCMCIA, others use optical storage devices (Iomega Zip drives), and way back when we flew MD80's, there was tape. About the size of a VHS cassette, but half as thick and made of metal.
QAR is used for statistics for the airline, by analysing the data they can possibly shave of fuel consumption and wasted travel time.

[ROGER]

I still use them - I carry data between my Windows 10 machine and my 25+ year old 386 DOS machine which, believe it or not, still works faster than Windows!

[frylock]

This should have been longer lol. Seemed like there was more stuff he could have told haha

[hellothere]

I remember when USB came out, it got so much faster but I still liked the looks of the floppy disks

[cckillbilliy]

At least he admits it is gonna die unlike that one guy with audio cassettes.

[JackBoii]

Nuclear missile facilities use floppy disks.

[dancoulson]

I like the slow access times of the floppy disk.
It's good because when I'm designing loading forms for my VB6 programs, I can test they correctly display.
Just today I started making a car home service database program, which fits on a floppy disk.
When you close it, a message stating "Writing unsaved data to disk. Stand by..." Appears for a few seconds.

[Aven-Sharma]

The "Floppy Disc" business won't be around forever.

Interviewer: "Are you sad about that?"

No, because I won't be around forever either.

Perfect answer.😂😂😂

[neeneko]

I am always kinda surprised when people are surprised floppy disks are still around.
While consumer goods might be specced to last a few years at most, critical systems are often specced in decades, and you really do not want them to be redesigned every time the fickle consumer market shifts.

[soulreaperichig]

Copied joke.

When my kid saw the floppy he told me, "Dad, someone's 3d printed the save icon."

[Kalvinjj]

Our robotics laboratory at uni has an older ABB industrial robot that takes floppies on it's control rack to upload programs to it.
That and it's LCD is showing typical 90s LCD fading (old polarizer's glue goes bad and dark). Tiny things to fix/upgrade that we feel like doing, but if anything ever goes bad, it's a few thousands to fix again, so it's all like, left as-is till the end of days

[cadenswain]

thank god. new floppys. now i can make boot disk.

[organfairy]

I still use floppy disks. I have some old organs and synthesizers from the 1990s that uses them as storage medium.

[Phantom-jmpy]

Poor man died a year later from videos release what a legend for keeping the business in

[googiegress]

I like running games and such off of floppy disks because the sound quality is so much warmer than USB sticks.

[LeonMRr]

Funny thing is, his entire office must have around the same storage capability as my flashdrive