floppies

Author
Discussion

billb

Original Poster:

3,198 posts

276 months

Tuesday 25th November 2003
quotequote all
most of the time when we save to a floppy on a windows 2000 machine here at work and then go home and use it on an xp mahine it says floppy disk is not formatted and wont work. This also happens the other way round if you save it first on an xp machine and bring it in. any ideas why as its vvv annnoying - have tried diff machines / diff disks. doesnt always happen but most of the time it does?

thanks

cacatous

3,167 posts

284 months

Tuesday 25th November 2003
quotequote all
I get this problem too. What gives?

sjg

7,564 posts

276 months

Tuesday 25th November 2003
quotequote all
No compatability issues between the two, but floppies are truly awful for reliability and any damage or corruption on the disc will usually result in Windows saying it's not formatted.

I work in a college and get students coming in every single day with knackered discs.

If you take care over handling them (you can get little cases from WHSmith that stops them getting crushed) and keep them away from magnets - fridges, TVs, speakers, power supplies - then they should be a bit more reliable. Still prone to random failures though.

But for transferring data between 2000 and XP machines, the little USB pendrives can't be beaten. 16Mb is now just over 10 quid, or higher capacity up to what your budget will stretch to.

www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?product_uid=45292

Really is no need to be using floppies these days - none of my machines have one now, just got a USB one that I attach in emergencies.

billb

Original Poster:

3,198 posts

276 months

Tuesday 25th November 2003
quotequote all
sure i never had this at my old place with floppies - yes they are unreliable but not on this scale - we didnt use xp before and it was fine..?

those usb sticks are fine unless u're usb sockets are behind the pc under the desks like in ours and i dont want our users sticking things in the pc's near all the power cables etc.

cacatous

3,167 posts

284 months

Tuesday 25th November 2003
quotequote all
Unfortunately Universities are shit at integrating new technology so USB pens and CD Recorders are too way out!

Podie

46,645 posts

286 months

Tuesday 25th November 2003
quotequote all
Buy a decent brand floppy and go for the FULL format... make sure it's not near something magnetic during transport too...

Podie

46,645 posts

286 months

Tuesday 25th November 2003
quotequote all
oh yeah, and "floppies"...

pdV6

16,442 posts

272 months

Tuesday 25th November 2003
quotequote all
Quite often problems of this sort can actually be the drive hardware out of tolerance. One FDD is a bit out one way, but not enough to stop it working with most other PCs. Along comes another PC with a FDD drive a bit out the other way, and between the 2 they won't read each other's disks.

Seen this loads of times. Solved by splashing out a tenner on a new floppy drive or two.

Marshy

2,750 posts

295 months

Tuesday 25th November 2003
quotequote all
What pdV6 said