A Farewell to floppys

[Sticks]

As reported on BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6314251.stm)


The time has come to bid farewell to one of the PC's more stalwart friends - the floppy disk.

Computing superstore PC World said it will no longer sell the storage devices, affectionately known as floppies, once existing stock runs out.

New storage systems, coupled with a need to store more than the 1.44 megabytes of data held by a standard floppy, have led to its demise.

Only a tiny percentage of PCs currently sold still have floppy disk drive


My ancient Compaq still has a floppy drive - Somewhere I have an Amstrad PPC 512D which could only take 720KB discs, has two floppies and no hard drive. It was supposedly the for-runner of a modern laptop.

:neutral:

[Nicolas]

Hey, I'm looking for a commodore 64 which runs on the big floppy's (single sided, but with a good knife you make them double sided) and datasettes.

My Pentium 4 3GHz HT still has a 1.44 mb floppy drive. For drivers sake.

[Van Rijn]

It's a bit of an issue for older computers. I keep a 450 mhz PIII for older DOS games and as a backup machine, and recently the FAT on the main HD became sick so I had to buy a new hard drive and reinstall Win 98SE. It has a CD drive, but it is too old to boot directly, so the only way to recover was with a floppy disk. Using another machine, online I found an image for a win98se boot floppy with CD support. I tried to write it to a floppy using a USB floppy drive.

As it turns out, while I have a number of old floppy disks sitting around, it was near impossible to find one that could take an image without many errors. Without a floppy disk, it wouldn't have been possible to bring my older computer back.

[Neverfly]

Very true- Floppy's are still useful for recovery and password recovery- for example if you forget your ADMIN password.

[Van Rijn]

Hey, I'm looking for a commodore 64 which runs on the big floppy's (single sided, but with a good knife you make them double sided) and datasettes.

My Pentium 4 3GHz HT still has a 1.44 mb floppy drive. For drivers sake.

The massive 140K 5 1/4 floppy drive on my Apple II+ cost nearly $600 in 1980. A hole punch was often used to make a floppy a "flip disk." I eventually wired in a three way switch so that I could set the drive to forced write protect, forced write enable, or normal for any disk. That cut down on hole punch use.

[Delvo]

Are they making new motherboards with no floppy disk drive slot/port?

[clop]

Pah you people are years ahead of me! At home I have a very old NEC personal computer, running the CP/M operating system, and it has dual 8 inch floppy drives!

clop

[Nicolas]

I can only beat you with my 12 inch vinyl records I'm afraid.

At age 10-14 I used the 5.25 inch floppys in the commodore 64 and in high school (they switched directly from these 80286 PC's to pentium II's with cd burner :D), but when I wasn't being old/retro I used the regular 1.44 MB type. Never used floppy's bigger than the 5.25 inch format.

[Doodler]

I've seen 8" floppy disks before...we used to use one to play frisbee in my high school computer science class.

[weatherc]

I haven't used a floppy in almost 9 years. I haven't used Zip disks in about 5. And with the use of FTP, e-mail, and thumb drives to transfer files, I hardly ever burn CDs or DVDs anymore, either.

[Vermonter]

Hey, I'm looking for a commodore 64 which runs on the big floppy's (single sided, but with a good knife you make them double sided) and datasettes.

My Pentium 4 3GHz HT still has a 1.44 mb floppy drive. For drivers sake.

I have a Commodore 64 that runs off the 5 1/4" floppies! It still runs, but they keyboard is a little off.

[Moose]

There's always been a need for portable storage. Floppies were a very good way to go about it. They're still important in terms of booting a failed machine. While most (if not all) modern BIOSes can boot from a CD/DVD these days, this function still isn't quite perfect. At least it wasn't when I was building my current machine.

USB solid state drives (thumb drives) are a good replacement for floppies in terms of flexible, portable storage. But, you can't boot from them. So their utility as a rescue device is limited. (Unless that's changed recently?)

[Nicolas]

I have a Commodore 64 that runs off the 5 1/4" floppies! It still runs, but they keyboard is a little off.

I may have phrased it a bit unclear. For the record, there is nothing special about a C64 running 5.25 inch floppys. It's the standard, and there are about 20 million of them. You can also have them run the regular 3.whatsit floppys, but that's a non-standard drive. The datasette drive is also a standard.

Interesting marketing point: while the C64 was very cheap for its time, the separately sold floppy drive (which was a lot cheaper to produce) was almost as expensive as the C64 itself! Retailers made profit on the drives, printers etc, and not so much on the core computer. Game consoles learned the tricks somewhere :).

I "need" a C64 with both floppy and datasette drive, because I want to buy copied games on flee markets (mostly floppy) and have original synthesizer software on datasette laying around here.
I also have a pair of 2 button joysticks which are upon closer inspection joysticks with electrically 2 times the same button :). In case a finger gets tired, I assume :).

[Moose]

Interesting marketing point: while the C64 was very cheap for its time, the separately sold floppy drive (which was a lot cheaper to produce) was almost as expensive as the C64 itself! Retailers made profit on the drives, printers etc, and not so much on the core computer. Game consoles learned the tricks somewhere :).

Oh yeah. Had a TRS-80/2. Cost about $350. So did the 5 1/4 drive. The printer was another $250.

Still, it was well worth the money.

[Bearded One]

Just a few weeks ago I hooked up a couple of 5 1/4" floppy drives. I am using them to convert some old software from the TI-99/4 format to DOS readable files. The first computer I tried couldn't do it because the FD controller doesn't support single density mode, then I tried a 233mhz machine and that one does support single density. Glad I kept that old machine around.

From the FWIW department, although these disks were written a good twenty years ago, been stored in less than optimum conditions and weren't always treated well when they were in use, so far I have had no disk read issues. Every disk has been read without a single error or glitch. Back then you could actually rely on a floppy!

[Maksutov]

[edit]From the FWIW department, although these disks were written a good twenty years ago, been stored in less than optimum conditions and weren't always treated well when they were in use, so far I have had no disk read issues. Every disk has been read without a single error or glitch. Back then you could actually rely on a floppy!I heard that!

- Murphyhttp://img396.imageshack.us/img396/3461/iconcool9io.gif

[hhEb09'1]

There's always been a need for portable storage. Floppies were a very good way to go about it. They're still important in terms of booting a failed machine. While most (if not all) modern BIOSes can boot from a CD/DVD these days, this function still isn't quite perfect. At least it wasn't when I was building my current machine.

USB solid state drives (thumb drives) are a good replacement for floppies in terms of flexible, portable storage. But, you can't boot from them. So their utility as a rescue device is limited. (Unless that's changed recently?)Here at school, last fall 700 kids were issued tablet PCs with no drive at all, and a thumb drive. Seems to be working out.

[tlbs101]

Last year (project finished in November), NASA sent us a MADS (multiplexed analog data system) telemetry unit for minor repair (1st failure since they were shipped). The MADS units get moved from shuttle to shuttle, and the last one we made was in the early 80's. We had almost thrown out the MADS tester 10 years ago, but somehow it got "kept". It operates using a PDP-11/24 and boots on 8" floppies. Fortunately it still worked.

BTW, one of the MADS units on Columbia was the last thing to transmit, "I'm getting too hot, and these wing temperature sensors are, as well".

I worked with a CP/M machine in the mid-80's that used 8" floppies, and I still have my TRS80 Color computer 5-1/4" floppy drives. I still have OS-9 for CoCo on the original disks.

I even keep a working 486 PC that has a 5-1/4 floppy drive, in storage, just in case...

[Larry Jacks]

Just a few weeks ago I hooked up a couple of 5 1/4" floppy drives. I am using them to convert some old software from the TI-99/4 format to DOS readable files. The first computer I tried couldn't do it because the FD controller doesn't support single density mode, then I tried a 233mhz machine and that one does support single density. Glad I kept that old machine around.

I have a lot of old floppies in my basement, both 5.25" and 3.5" sizes. I still have an old computer with a 3.5" drive but I have not had a 5.25" drive for years. I'd like to get access to an old computer so I can examine those disks and extract anything useful. I remember writing some space related software back in the late 1980s that I'd like to salvage. The source code is on those old disks. Hindsight being what it is, I should've done this years ago before getting rid of the old drive. Too late now.

[Moose]

Here at school, last fall 700 kids were issued tablet PCs with no drive at all, and a thumb drive. Seems to be working out.

Neat! I wonder whose BIOS that is?

[danscope]

Hi, I having been using 3 1/2 floppies for years. Not only is it a convenient way to recover drivers, and format HD's, recover disks etc, but I find it especially convenient to give guest's information,pictures, Recipies(many , many recipies,
to people who are not on line. It is safe, secure, and inexpensive. And quick.
Fits in your shirt pocket. No worries.
I shall continue to employ these little wonders.
Best regards, Dan

[Nicolas]

then I tried a 233mhz machine and that one does support single density. Glad I kept that old machine around.

I used a 233 machine up to less than 2 years ago as my primary pc. Slightly overclocked, but still.

I don't know about 5.25" floppies, but 3.5" floppys did tend to fail on me regularly, and I was cautious with them.

[Trebuchet]

....
I even keep a working 486 PC that has a 5-1/4 floppy drive, in storage, just in case...

That beats my Pentium 166 with 5-1/4 and 3-1/2 drives. Even when it was new I had to specially install the 5-1/4. That was because of the ton of genealogy data I had stored on them.

And its still on them, though not in use. I really need to copy all of that onto some other media and get rid of the disks and the machine.

I still use Iomega ZIP drives regularly.

[publius]

"Ol' Reliable", my main machine here, a dual PIII board, still has a 5 1/4" floppy drive. :) I haven't used it in a while -- I'm a digital pack rat, I save everything, and last year, fearing floppy degradation, I copied lots of old DOS software off the original 5.25" distribution disks, and archived to DVD.

Basically, I've always built my own machines, and I just keep parts, and the 5.25" was one part I always kept. However, many BIOSes in later motherboards dropped 5.25" support a year or two ago.


-Richard

[Van Rijn]

Oh yeah. Had a TRS-80/2. Cost about $350. So did the 5 1/4 drive. The printer was another $250.

Still, it was well worth the money.

My Apple II+ ran about $2,000 in 1980. But it was worth the money - I learned a lot about computer internals on that machine, I didn't just use it for games (though I certainly did play them!).

[Van Rijn]

Just a few weeks ago I hooked up a couple of 5 1/4" floppy drives. I am using them to convert some old software from the TI-99/4 format to DOS readable files. The first computer I tried couldn't do it because the FD controller doesn't support single density mode, then I tried a 233mhz machine and that one does support single density. Glad I kept that old machine around.

From the FWIW department, although these disks were written a good twenty years ago, been stored in less than optimum conditions and weren't always treated well when they were in use, so far I have had no disk read issues. Every disk has been read without a single error or glitch. Back then you could actually rely on a floppy!

I had some errors, but was still able to read quite a few of the Apple II+ disks the last time I checked them. It helps that the data density is so much lower on the old disks.

By the way, I never had an 8 inch drive myself, but I knew someone who had a CPM box with twin 1 meg 8" floppies. At the time, that was an astonishing amount of online storage.

[Doodler]

I will miss the 3.5's. I still have a few old DOS games that I loved on them. One day, I will have to find a way to salvage them.

[snarkophilus]

I also have a pair of 2 button joysticks which are upon closer inspection joysticks with electrically 2 times the same button :). In case a finger gets tired, I assume :).

I still have my C64 joysticks! After the machine went kaput, they were re-wired to run a remote-controlled hovercraft. It didn't work very well because I couldn't figure out how to provide enough lift to overcome the weight of the batteries, so the bottom dragged a bit, but it was fun to build. The handles on those joysticks are solid.

[Nicolas]

You've got "hundreds" of C64 joysticks, so it depends on the type :)

The joystick also worked on my Sega Master System II, though with only 1 electrical button, you couldn't really play. The button lock was nice though :).

[Vermonter]

You've got "hundreds" of C64 joysticks, so it depends on the type :)

The joystick also worked on my Sega Master System II, though with only 1 electrical button, you couldn't really play. The button lock was nice though :).

I remember finding that out, too. They work in a Sega Genesis, but only one button does anything. Worked great for Sonic!

[Chuck]

My TRS-80 Model I disks could each hold 89,600 bytes of data and cost $6 for one disk, or $16 for a three-pack, or $40 for a box of ten. Each disk drive cost $500. This was in 1978. The last time my company bought 3½ disks they ended up being free after sending in for the rebate. I don't remember how many years ago that was.

[mugaliens]

It's a bit of an issue for older computers. I keep a 450 mhz PIII for older DOS games and as a backup machine, and recently the FAT on the main HD became sick so I had to buy a new hard drive and reinstall Win 98SE. It has a CD drive, but it is too old to boot directly, so the only way to recover was with a floppy disk. Using another machine, online I found an image for a win98se boot floppy with CD support. I tried to write it to a floppy using a USB floppy drive.

As it turns out, while I have a number of old floppy disks sitting around, it was near impossible to find one that could take an image without many errors. Without a floppy disk, it wouldn't have been possible to bring my older computer back.

Not to be rude or anything, but perhaps it's time to upgrade? If you're making $20 an hour, the amount of time you spend keeping that machine working throughout the year would probably pay for a used Pentium IV machine running at 2.54 GHz and with 2 GB ram.

[Van Rijn]

Not to be rude or anything, but perhaps it's time to upgrade? If you're making $20 an hour, the amount of time you spend keeping that machine working throughout the year would probably pay for a used Pentium IV machine running at 2.54 GHz and with 2 GB ram.

As I said, I keep that machine for old DOS games and backup. It's a pain to get some dos games to run under Win XP. I have a (several years old) 3ghz machine with (now) 750 GB HD capacity and 2 GB ram. I also have a tablet/laptop. For that matter, I have a PDA with a faster clock speed than the 450mhz machine.

I'm getting about ready to replace the 3ghz machine.

[Bearded One]

As I said, I keep that machine for old DOS games and backup. It's a pain to get some dos games to run under Win XP. I have a (several years old) 3ghz machine with (now) 750 GB HD capacity and 2 GB ram. I also have a tablet/laptop. For that matter, I have a PDA with a faster clock speed than the 450mhz machine.

I'm getting about ready to replace the 3ghz machine.

I wish I still had a 8086 and/or a 386 based machine around. It's darn near impossible to play some old games on anything newer. MoSlow and other "slowdown" programs are very limited in what they can do :(

[Moose]

Try dosbox.

[Bearded One]

Try dosbox.
I've tried DosBox, Bochs, VDM and a bunch of others. So far none of them have been able to simulate/emulate the environment adequately for many games. Things were just to timing dependant back then. Some do better at some games, others do better at others. So far the best I've gotten is running Bochs compiled on a Linux box with custom timing parameters. Seems strange that Linux seems to do DOS better than Windows :p

[danscope]

Try dosbox.

Hi Moose, Please define and expand on dosbox. I have an 800mgz pentium3,
now running xp. I can't use my flight simulators . How does this operate?
Any help and advice will be greatly apreciated.
Many thanks, Dan

[Moose]

Hi Moose, Please define and expand on dosbox.

A simple google search reveals (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1):

From their FAQ:

DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=EmulatedSoundHardware), graphics (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=EmulatedGraphicsHardware), mouse, modem (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=EmulatedCommunicationHardware), etc., necessary for running many old DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux and FreeBSD. However, it is not restricted to running only games. In theory, any DOS application should run in DOSBox, but the emphasis has been on getting DOS games to run smoothly, which means that communication, networking and printer support are still in early developement.

[Doodler]

From their FAQ:

DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=EmulatedSoundHardware), graphics (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=EmulatedGraphicsHardware), mouse, modem (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=EmulatedCommunicationHardware), etc., necessary for running many old DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux and FreeBSD. However, it is not restricted to running only games. In theory, any DOS application should run in DOSBox, but the emphasis has been on getting DOS games to run smoothly, which means that communication, networking and printer support are still in early developement.


I must have this....I've been without X-Com: UFO for WAY too long...

[Moose]

I must have this....I've been without X-Com: UFO for WAY too long...

Yeah, I know what you mean. Privateer has been calling to me incessantly since I've discovered it. Still haven't taken the time to sit down with it and get it going. I keep figuring someone will come out with a decent space trading game before I get around to it, but I keep getting disappointed. ;)

Think I'll try and get 'er going tonight.

[Doodler]

Yeah, I know what you mean. Privateer has been calling to me incessantly since I've discovered it. Still haven't taken the time to sit down with it and get it going. I keep figuring someone will come out with a decent space trading game before I get around to it, but I keep getting disappointed. ;)

Think I'll try and get 'er going tonight.

For trading, Darkstar One managed a fairly good one, though the campaign doesn't last anywhere NEAR long enough to make it worth spending too much time in.

[Bearded One]

I must have this....I've been without X-Com: UFO for WAY too long...
Another good utility for getting old DOS games to work is VDMsound:

VDMSound (http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/)

Although it's not a full emulator, it runs a lot of games better than the emulators. Especially helpful if your biggest problems are sound cards.

[Moose]

For trading, Darkstar One managed a fairly good one, though the campaign doesn't last anywhere NEAR long enough to make it worth spending too much time in.

Yeah, I looked at it a little, although the reviews were a little spare about details. Is it possible to make a true blockade runner like in Privateer, light on armament and shielding, but very long on speed?

Until I actually sat down and started the campaign missions, I ran with nothing more than the lasers you get at the start of the game and a full load of FF missiles I frequently used as chase mines, and if I took out any ships, it was mostly accidental. Sort of. The guns were the very last thing I upgraded, and I never maxxed out the shield generators.

The thing I liked most about privateer was that with rare exceptions I didn't have to stick around and wade through fight after fight. I'd hit the 'burners at first sight and leave them sucking my wake for the rest of the voyage. Same with the contraband missions. I'd load up every crevase on the ship and "flash my *cough* at the gorram law."

Does that sound at all like Darkstar One?

[Doodler]

The biggest problem with X-Com is the game outside of the ground encounters. The world clock runs at the CPU's speed, so its just unplayably fast.

[Doodler]

Yeah, I looked at it a little, although the reviews were a little spare about details. Is it possible to make a true blockade runner like in Privateer, light on armament and shielding, but very long on speed?

Until I actually sat down and started the campaign missions, I ran with nothing more than the lasers you get at the start of the game and a full load of FF missiles I frequently used as chase mines, and if I took out any ships, it was mostly accidental. Sort of. The guns were the very last thing I upgraded, and I never maxxed out the shield generators.

The thing I liked most about privateer was that with rare exceptions I didn't have to stick around and wade through fight after fight. I'd hit the 'burners at first sight and leave them sucking my wake for the rest of the voyage. Same with the contraband missions. I'd load up every crevase on the ship and "flash my *cough* at the gorram law."

Does that sound at all like Darkstar One?

That's the one. :)

I went with turrets, myself. When the time came that I got tight on cash, I smuggled Androids. I evaded more than a few scans by slamming the thrusters on full and diving towards those obnoxiously small docking bay doors. Got pretty good with it.

My final ship was 4 Wings, 10 Hull, 6 Engine. Looked a little like a battlestar when it was all done.

Five turrets total, four from that uberadvanced race, then one from the Avians that ate shield energy for breakfast. By the time I completed the campaign, I could just fly my ship in a nice gentle circle and the turrets did all the work.

[Moose]

Huh. I'll certainly take a closer look then. Do they have a demo perchance?

[Doodler]

They do have one, I'll be darned if I can find it. Lemme look around. Its a German game first and foremost, so the English support is an afterthought. I do know its out there, though.

[Doodler]

http://www.download.com/DarkStar-One-demo/3000-7557_4-10555171.html

[Moose]

Downloading now. [Edit: Eek, firefox is estimating an 12 hour download! Meh, checking Fileplanet.] [Edit again: 50 minutes. Better. Much better.]

Got Privateer to work in dosbox, BTW, but it was so choppy as to be nearly unplayable. :-(

[Maksutov]

There's software out there that will slow down one's CPU. Here's a freeware example. (http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_204_11991.html) Probably more out there.

I've never used any since I hardly ever play games, and the few that I do (FS, Mean18) work fine on my legacy 200MHz MMX machine.

BTW, I've got a spare 5.25 DSHD drive hanging around. If someone could use it, MMAO plus S+H by PM. Let me know first so I add may you to the PM access list.

[jumbo]

I have an 800mgz pentium3,
now running xp. I can't use my flight simulators .
Which flight simulators?
I play such sims a lot including some gems from way back:
Knights of the Sky, Red Baron and Red Baron 3d. Flight Unlimited 2 (i think i got 1 going on xp as well) and DIs fantastic Tornado and a whole bunch of others too.

Things like dos box might help or there may be more specific things that will get them going in XP.

[Moose]

*grump* Man, this hasn't been a good day for online shopping.

Futureshop and Amazon.ca don't carry either the replacement (cordless) joystick I want or Darkstar One. Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com both carry them, but refuse to ship to Canada for some unstated reason. (Books, music CDs and DVDs, no problem apparently.)

I finally managed to track down the joystick at Tigerdirect.ca. No idea how I'm going to track down Darkstar One though. I'm running out of ideas here.

Hmm. Maybe EB has it? [Edit: Yup, all is good and fine in my world right now.]

[Doodler]

I bought my copy at Best Buy. Kind of a lark, but an entertaining one.

[Moose]

I bought my copy at Best Buy. Kind of a lark, but an entertaining one.

Yeah, Best Buy and Futureshop are the same stores. Futureshop's online store is a bit hit-or-miss sometimes. I rarely get very much joy there in terms of availability, but their shipping options tend to be pretty good, so I make a point of checking.

I've become a wary fan of Tigerdirect. They've nearly always come through for me whenever I'm feeling picky about hardware brand/model. They're often the very last company in Canada to have the specific part/device you're looking for in stock. I say wary, though, because there are rumors they're not always great about honoring their warranties in a timely manner, and they'll spam the heck out of you with their (mostly physical) catalogues. As far as I can tell, though, they don't sell your addresses to anyone. It's all their own stuff, and it's all overt. So it's all quite managable.

[Moose]

Found something interesting this morning: Apparently no fewer than two groups have been working on remaking Privateer for modern machines.

The first two links of this google search (http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=my_mod&p=privateer+remake) are paydirt. According to wikipedia, the first (Privateer Remake, which is the one I'm trying first) adds features and a storyline while the second (Privateer Gold) is attempting to stay as faithful to the original as possible.

Apparently the requirements for both are fairly reasonable, so most machines should be able to run it.

[crosscountry]

The massive 140K 5 1/4 floppy drive on my Apple II+ cost nearly $600 in 1980. A hole punch was often used to make a floppy a "flip disk." I eventually wired in a three way switch so that I could set the drive to forced write protect, forced write enable, or normal for any disk. That cut down on hole punch use.


You can get a better than par laptop for that price these days:shifty:

[Van Rijn]

You can get a better than par laptop for that price these days:shifty:

. . . not counting inflation, yes. Occasionally, I still manage to get amazed at some things, like the postage stamp sized SD cards I use in my PDA that could hold all the files I ever had on my Apple II, and still be mostly empty.

I don't begrudge the cost, though. Hardware evolved, but I learned a lot with that machine. It paid for itself many times over.

[Jeff Root]

I'll piggyback my question onto this thread...

What hard drive formats do Windows 2000, XP, and Vista use?
How about the various Linuxes?

I plan to get a new hard drive but don't know what operating
system I'll put on it, so I'd like to find out how I should have it
formatted.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Moose]

NTFS will work on all of them. So will Fat32.

[crosscountry]

Linux has one that never needs to be defragmented. It only uses a little processor power but save speed in the long run. I don't remember what it is called but will look it up.

[Moose]

Linux has one that never needs to be defragmented. It only uses a little processor power but save speed in the long run. I don't remember what it is called but will look it up.

JFSv2 or 3, IIRC. Microsoft will go out of their way to not recognize it, though.

[ASEI]

This could be very bad news for my father, who owns probably a few hundred thousand dollars worth of wire EDM machines, all of which are programmable only by floppy disk. They're not even that old!

[Jeff Root]

NTFS will work on all of them. So will Fat32.
Ah, good. At the risk of starting a minor war, should I prefer one
over the other? I didn't like the description of FAT32 when I looked
at it years ago, but I've never had any trouble with it. I have no
experience with NTFS.

What would be the absolute minimum I would need to format a drive
as NTFS? Like, to format a drive as FAT32, I just need a floppy
with IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM, FDISK.EXE, and FORMAT.COM.


Linux has one that never needs to be defragmented.
Interesting. How is that possible?


JFSv2 or 3, IIRC. Microsoft will go out of their way to not recognize it, though.
Can you describe how it might behave?

Thanks, guys!

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[The Supreme Canuck]

Well, near as I can tell, NTFS is MS's replacement for FAT32. Probably your better bet, especially if you want to run XP or Vista.

[Moose]

Interesting. How is that possible?

I don't have the details, sorry. JFSv2 didn't exist back when I cared about the nuts and bolts of that sort of thing.

I suspect it helps that JFS keeps the file allocation table in active RAM (with occasional writes to disk) rather than write to disk at all times like FAT.

Can you describe how it might behave?

By being unable to read the disk. It'll behave just like the disk has never been formatted.

[crosscountry]

I'm not sure either, but I think what it does is continuously move data around. Every time you delete something it may refill it - kind of like tetris blocks falling when a row below is moved.


BUT don't quote me on that, it's pure speculation.

[publius]

Well, near as I can tell, NTFS is MS's replacement for FAT32. Probably your better bet, especially if you want to run XP or Vista.

NTFS came out long before FAT32. NTFS stands for NT File System, and has been around since NT 3.x FAT32 was a just an extension of FAT to keep the old Win9x line around a bit longer. Win2K, XP, and now Vista are from the NT line.

Version numbers have been used as a marketing ploy for years. Version 1.0 has a stigma of something new and buggy, while usually they get it right around the 3rd major release, version 3.0. So marketing's solution is to name the first release version 3.0.

And that's what they did with NT. The first version was 3.1. Then came NT 4.0 (really 2.0). The next major version was going to be NT 5.0 (really 3.0). But MS decided to end the 9x kernel line and let NT take over. So they renamed NT 5.0 to Windows 2000. But, it wasn't quite ready to take over the "consumer market". Many were worried MS was going to screw it up to make a "consumer friendly OS" out of it.

And just like with anything, Win2K, really version 3.0, was when they got it right. It had "matured" so to speak. Beyond 3.0, it's all just cruising, and even adding useless features and bells and whistles that aren't really needed......

XP is technically NT 5.1 (really version 3.1). Vista is NT 6.0 (really the 4.0 release). And you add the server line branch off that started with NT 4.0 Server.

-Richard

[crosscountry]

it seems like you're confusing operating systems with hard disk format types. You can mix them though and run Win95 on a NTFS disk if you want (well maybe not, but the point is made)

[The Supreme Canuck]

NTFS came out long before FAT32.

True enough. I meant for OSes intended for home use, though. Should have been clearer.

Anyway, the point was that if you are going to use a Windows NT OS, you'll probably want to go with NTFS.

[publius]

it seems like you're confusing operating systems with hard disk format types. You can mix them though and run Win95 on a NTFS disk if you want (well maybe not, but the point is made)

Well, you're right. NTFS is a file system. But it is a proprietary MS file system that was introduced with the NT operating system (derived from HPFS when MS and IBM were working together on OS/2), as NT's "native file system". OSes and file systems have always sort of gone hand in hand.

And no, Win9x never had support for NTFS. It can't read it and certainly can't boot from it. Some third parties (Sysinternals in particular) did write some NTFS drivers for Win9x, but it was very limited and certainly did not allow booting.

-Richard

[publius]

True enough. I meant for OSes intended for home use, though. Should have been clearer.

Anyway, the point was that if you are going to use a Windows NT OS, you'll probably want to go with NTFS.

Oh yes, no question about. FAT32 was just something to increase the maximum partition size FAT could reasonably handle so as to keep Win9x viable for just a bit longer.

NTFS, while much more complex, MUCH more handles huge partitions fine. I've always been a partitioning nutcase (you don't want to know how many partitions I've had at time -- NTFS's "mount points" allowing you to mount volumes under NTFS directories so as not to need a drive letter has been put to good use).

Lately, I've let NTFS loose on a 100GB partition, and it performs well, even with huge numbers of files. It is well beyond FAT32. I will grant MS that with NTFS. When they designed it, they designed it to scale up well for partition sizes that were unimaginable at the time (remember the famous
"640KB of ram is enough for anybody" comment).



-Richard

[Charlie in Dayton]

http://64.235.231.60/ComputerGiggles/1989computer.jpg

...'nuff said...

[crosscountry]

Lol

[Maksutov]

[edit]...'nuff said...I remember when the first of those showed up at work back in the middle 80s.

It was amazing how quickly they could render a CADD wireframe.

Then the powers that were decided we all should have DEC workstations.

Oy!


PS: Ah, the old Micro Channel! RIP.

[Bearded One]

Well, near as I can tell, NTFS is MS's replacement for FAT32. Probably your better bet, especially if you want to run XP or Vista.
NTFS (Windows) and ext3(Linux) are both journaling file systems. Basically, a journaling file system keeps a log of what's being written to disk. Before writing data the system will write a log entry that basically says "I'm going to write x bytes to the disk for file xxx". When the write is complete it writes another entry saying if it was successful. The big advantage to this is if you have a system crash the journal will contain the names of the file writes that were aborted/failed and the system only needs to recover/repair those files. This is why with NTFS and ext3 you don't get that scandisk disk check on bootup, after a crash or improper shutdown, like you used to get under FAT with Windows.

NTFS and ext3 filesystems are also less prone to fragmentation than the old FAT model, but they can still get fragmented. There is less of an advantage to defragmenting those systems, and defragmenting, although sometimes usefull, was always more hype than necessity. Defragmenting programs do exist for Linux, they just aren't very popular because they don't usually help all that much.