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Posted on July 20th, 2009 by Barry Collins
Windows 7 still clinging to floppy drives
I can’t remember the last time I used a floppy disk. I can’t even remember the last time I had a PC with a floppy disk drive in it. Like Robbie Williams and MPs with a conscience, I’d largely forgotten they even existed.
Not Microsoft, though. The company may be ploughing on with its next-generation operating system, but it fondly remembers the days when Windows 95 came on no fewer than 13 floppy disks, and is still attempting to keep the flagging old storage technology alive in Windows 7.
This was the message I saw when I attempted to create a password reset disk in Windows 7 over the weekend:
Microsoft’s not even covering the bases: it suggests floppy drives ahead of those new-fangled USB sticks, so determined is the company to keep the 3.5in clickers alive.
Is someone on commission over there in Redmond? We demand answers.
Tags: floppy disks, Microsoft, Windows 7
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27 Responses to “ Windows 7 still clinging to floppy drives ”
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July 20th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
It does not make sense to you because you are a computer enthusiast keeping up with the latest technology.
Given that many of the Windows 7 customers will be corporate (or so Microsoft hope) it does make a lot of sense bearing in mind how slow corporations and large businesses can be in upgrading hardware. Almost all the computers I use at work have floppy drives, some of them have it as the only option available! I suppose I could get information to another PC using the RS232 port…
July 20th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I don’t think any corporation is going to be upgrading ancient computer to Windows 7, though! The most likely scenario is that it will be introduced when the hardware is next replaced
July 20th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
As I noted in my column a couple of months ago, Office 2007 still uses floppy disk icons for the “Save” and “Save As…” commands. (Office 2010 does too.) The icons look really strange given that most new computers don’t even have floppy disk drives and the vast majority fo documents have been saved to network folders for many, many years.
Simon Jones
Contributing Editor
PC Pro Magazine
July 20th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
The motherboard manufacturers are still installing floppy drive interfaces, even on the latest socket 1366 & AM2+ boards, so I would have though need to MS would cater for this.
I still use them on the systems I build – one last week, for example (Phenom processor, ATI 4870 Graphics, Windows 7) – the person asked to have a floppy drive installed as they still had some old stuff saved on them
Not sure what icon Office could use for “Save” – DVD disk? They’re just great for saving one word document on.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
I thought the military were a great preserve of floppy-ness?
July 20th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
on some Netac USB Flash drives you have a little switch to change to USB OR FDD when you switch to FDD and put it into a USB port in the PC in comes up as virtual floppy A drive, so no need for the actual floppy discs or physical installed floppy drives.
July 21st, 2009 at 6:03 am
Some banking software still requires a floppy disk to be inserted to generate the secure key for the transaction… :-S
Maybe the banks should join the 21st Century, although they probably can’t afford to these days
July 21st, 2009 at 6:41 am
Why not?
i think older technology can work with newer tech. It’s not causing any problems by putting support in for a floppy disk drive. It’s just convenience really.
July 21st, 2009 at 8:11 am
@Simon Jones
I’m not sure if I would know where to find the save button without a floppy icon! The icon has become as ubiquitous as the disks ever were.
July 21st, 2009 at 8:58 am
@Simon Jones: Leave the floppy disk icon alone
Incidentally when did we ever use a clipboard to Paste?
July 21st, 2009 at 11:41 am
@Daniel : Nice reaction. Too much of the articles and remarks are written by omputer enthusiast who want to keep up with the latest technology, instead of by genuine users.
And if it are not omputer enthusiast, it are just computer sales men.
July 21st, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I stopped using floppy disks when the floppy controller on my home-build PC stopped working. They were only used as boot disks until I upgraded from Windows 95. I do still like the floppy disk icon for the ’save’ function. If we were to really move forward and do away with the past, a ‘hard disk’ icon or the storage symbol used in flow charts could replace the floppy icon.
July 21st, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Yea, ever wondered why the first disk drive is ‘C’! Floppy disks have survived until very recently because of the tardy progress in providing an alternative, writeable, bootable medium. It is only quite recently that you can rely on being able to boot from a USB drive, so you’ve needed a floppy if you wanted to flash your BIOS or be sure of recovering from a HD failure.
The really weird klingon technology is the PS2 keyboard and mouse connector. When did you last see a keyboard or mouse on sale with anything but USB? Yet motherboard manufacturers insist on wasting valuable back panel real-estate on these useless connectors even on the latest and greatest Core i7 boards!
July 21st, 2009 at 5:06 pm
“This was the message I saw when I attempted to create a password reset disk in Windows 7 over the weekend:”
Author still refers to removable storage as disks while criticizing MS for doing the same. Never heard of those new-fangled usb drives? Ill clue you in they are not discs.
July 21st, 2009 at 5:36 pm
I guess Microsoft were right to have the concern for floppy usage. readers and writers of this article shoud remmber that MS is a global organisation and most of the south east asian, middle east and african nations still use computers with floppy drives and their needs have to be catered too when MS thinks in a global context before releasing an OS. May be microsoft can release a satisfactory version for hightech hardware users like the readers and writers of this blog with high definiton blue ray DVD symbol on save button. but the rest of the world that include 70% users of microsoft, are still happy with floppy disks.
July 21st, 2009 at 8:27 pm
shouldn’t the message be relative to whether or not the machine has a floppy drive?
July 21st, 2009 at 8:38 pm
OK,so I don’t need a floppy drive in my PC for my own use.
But when someone with an older PC and a small file on floppy gives to me to read, recover the data or whatever, I still need to be able to read it on my machine. While discs are around there will be clients, co workers etc using them.
July 21st, 2009 at 8:46 pm
This is such a non-issue. Mentioning floppy disks in the same sentence as USB flash drives on the subject of removable media is hardly ‘clinging’ to floppy drives.
And even if it were, why is that so bad? Ask /mother/ where the USB port on her computing machine is. Ask her to plug in a ‘USB FLASH DRIVE’. She would probably just give up in fear of breaking something. She at least recognizes what a floppy disk is, and suddenly everything in that sentence makes sense.
It’s a good accessibility choice, in my opinion.
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:21 am
People! You all should be updating your BIOS regularly with you FLOPPY DRIVE (except a few ;aptops that can be updated in Windows). If you haven’t then you could be missing our on extra speed due to fixed bugs or extra BIOS options or more CPU/RAM/etc compatibility. Floppy cannot die until the whole BIOS system is redesigned (or more specifically, redesigned and actually implimented, unlike all the other alternatives that have been tested).
July 22nd, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Ridiculous article: Just because it gives you the option and mentions it first (OH NO!) doesn’t mean it’s CLINGING to it. While it’s unlikely for any newer system to have a floppy drive, my last system had one and had the specs to run WIndows 7. Remember, the requirements for 7 are LESS than Vista, not more.
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Oh, gee, let me see if I can remember when I last used a floppy drive…
It was last Thursday, when I had to create a BIOS flash disk for a computer. Yeah, you can supposedly do it via USB, IF the device capacity is right and IF the BIOS works ok with that particular device and IF… oh, you get the picture.
Floppies are still around because they work. Does your office have a fax machine?
July 24th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Thanks for the article it was informative because the other month I was wondering if the floppy would still be of use in Windows 7! I`m sure the floppy option is kept for users in places were floppies are still used ………as for the save icon in office I think the floppy disk icon is deserved becaused the floppy disk is the only storage format that has dominated the computing landscape for decades before being upstaged by other formats (even earlier computers with no hard drives had floppy drives ) As for people with data on floppy disks buy some extra floppy drives for future use as they may disappear soon remember what happened to NASA and its data …..on a light note floppy disks leave me with a warm feeling because every time I hear or read about them I get all nostalgic…….!
July 26th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
To the person that suggested PS/2 is useless: I have a PS/2 keyboard and mouse. Although the better quality products may be USB, my keyboard is perfectly good, and it saves confusion whilst setting up. PS/2 is probably cheaper than USB. I still often use floppies, if I hadn’t been able to find an old flash drive that worked in my old computer I would have had to use floppies to load the drivers for flash drives.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
What’s more interesting is that Windows 7 still offers the chance to format a floppy as an MS-DOS startup disk (containing a butchered copy of DOS 8 from Windows ME, 10 years old!). Windows 7 also has a nice shiny icon for the 5.25″ floppy that I’ve hooked up to my 3-month-old Core2 Duo PC – and yes, it recognises and handles 360K floppies just fine!
August 7th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
I regularly use the built-in floppy disc drive to update aircraft such as the modern ‘Fly-By-Wire’ Airbus A320’s Flight Management Computer’s Navigation Data-base every month. There are portable versions available with compact flash cards or USB, but I haven’t seen them. In fact, the vast majority of aircraft software is still held on floppy discs!
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:52 am
And why not keep the floppy drive? How much code does it take, practicaly none compared to how much code there is altogether. I think people like you forget about past technology too. I use old computers ALL the time where the floppy disc is the only way to transfer data. Heck, sometimes i have to transfer data via 5.25″ floppy discs henz why i have both a 3.5″ and a 5.25″ floppy disc drives in my pc which by the way is an Athlon 4200 @2.7ghz and a gts260!!!
I work alot with DOS, Acorn and alike. Theres no other way than using a floppy. and even in 10 years time i will continue to put a floppy or even two floppy drives (1 being my 5.25″) into my main PC. Even if i have to buy an SCSI card!!!
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:00 am
btw, windows 7 supports 5.25″ floppy discs too!! just like xp before it! long live 5.25