when did you last use a floppy disk?

[Doomkid]

TraceOfSpades said:

I was saving information about local cars for sale.

I was probably using mine for crudely drawn mspaint doodles and map layouts. I used to draw all over my floppy disks in marker until I messed one up by doing so, the disk was pretty much wet with ink when I was done with it. Also this is totally offtopic, but this reminds me of a time when I was about 5 where I "helped" my dad by reorganizing his files, including a bunch of stuff in the program files and system32 directories.. I'll never forget the expression of horror as he tried to run programs and find files and none of it was there or worked properly anymore. He didn't get angry, but I could tell I'd fucked his day hard because he had a lot of important work related files on that PC - He literally sat with his face in his palms for like 30 minutes as he began reformatting the computer. I felt so terrible for that, but the next day he taught me so much about how computers/windows worked so at least something good came out of it. Funny old memories.

[Soundblock]

raymoohawk said:

when was the last time you used a floppy?

Whenever I test Project PAR for a blue keycard:



Seriously though, I have no idea when I last used one. The last remaining floppy that I own is the disk I used to upload my finished Master Levels.

[Rathori]

Probably around mid-2000s, for school.

I remember either drives or floppies themselves were pretty low quality at that point in time, and you were VERY lucky if the floppy was still readable by the time you took it to another computer.

[Zed]

I still have around 80-100 3.5" floppy disks around. I don't really use them on a regular basis, but since I have some stuff in those disks that won't run on anything but my old laptop, I sometimes use them, mostly for nostalgia. Last time was 2 weeks ago.

[Wild Dog]

Maybe 2000 and i didn't have much use for them. If i had to transfer something that was too big for my internet conection i had CDs and buying Cds by the bulk was cheap.

[Tristan]

Somewhere around 2002-2004 I guess. My grandad gave me this collection of them, not sure what was on most of them, but a couple had some games on them. If I remember rightly, one of those was Monster Truck Madness, used to play the shit out of that one.

[ReFracture]

Earlier this year but around February and March I had a phase of toying with old computer hardware. My buddy picked up a copy of Retro City Rampage 486 to use on his IBM Aptiva, totally installed it via floppy disk.

[YukiHerz]

Can't remember the date, i was a child and one of my mother's friend lent me a computer with some floppies, there was pac-man and some other games, good times.

[Csonicgo]

last week. I keep a copy of my resume on one.

[CODOR]

Just about every day. Title searching software I use for work requires its login key files stored on removable media (in fact, I think one had to pay extra to even use USB drives until 2008 or so). Since the files are only a few kilobytes and I still have a ton of 3.5" floppies around it seems most efficient to use those.

I've also been imaging my 5.25" floppies from the late 1980s and early 1990s. I note that they tend to be way more reliable than the 3.5" floppies used in the mid-1990s. I don't know if it's due to the lower data density or if manufacturing quality went down when demand went up. Probably a bit of both...

[hex11]

Yeah the old disks were more reliable. I had Amstrad CPC floppies that hardly ever got any corruption, despite very heavy use. Also my Amiga 500 disks were pretty solid too.
But by mid 90's I noticed the PC floppies weren't as good. I got errors a lot more frequently, and by late 90's they were considered unreliable. Pretty strange given how rock-solid they performed in the 80's and even early 90's.
Well it turns out that floppy manufacturing got sent to China at some point in mid 90's, and the quality just went to hell.
Also there's the matter of dust when floppies are only in occasional use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disks#Decline
This wasn't a problem with Amstrad, Amiga, and other 80's computers since they lacked cooling fans and made regular use of floppy drive.

[Fulgrim]

To be completely honest, I can't remember. Probably way back in high school. Though now that I think about it, I kind of want to put a floppy disk drive in my pc. For purely cosmetic reasons.