Advantages: Reliable, relatively cheap, well-known brand, good build quality
Disadvantages: Small capacity, not as reliable as some other forms of storage, slow

...~~~ Overview & Appearance ~~~ The MPF920 is a fairly unremarkable floppy disk drive produced by Sony to be mounted inside your trusty computer. The drive supports 3.5" diskettes up to a maximum capacity of 1.44MB. Measuring just over 3.5" x 4.5" x 1" (approx) the main body of the unit is composed of steel, with a beige fascia at the front. There is a small slot for inserting your diskette, a button to eject the diskette and a small green LED to indicate whether the drive is being read from or written to by your computer. The rear of the unit features a small 4-pin power connector and also a second set of smaller pins for connecting the drive to your motherboard by means of the supplied (sometimes!) lead. The drive features a selection of small holes along each side so that you can screw it securely into your PC case. Interestingly... Read review

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Advantages: More reliable than a floppy
Disadvantages: Quite expensive

...I had just re-started school and when attending my first IT lesson I was immediately informed by the teacher that to securely save my work this year i would be best off buying a USB flash memory drive as lately floppys were far too un-reliable and she didn't want us losing important schoolwork/coursework due to a malfunction of the floppy. With this in mind I started looking around for a USB flash memory drive for a decent price, i already knew that Kingston was a well known (memory) brand and was known to be very reliable and so when looking around paid special attention to theirs. I also knew that i either wanted a 128 or 256 memory capacity as this would mean that I would be able to easily store all my schoolwork with no worries that the space would run out. I decided on the Kingston 256 as i considered it to be a decent price... Read review

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Advantages: quicker than floppys, holds several hundread MBs of data, easy to carry around
Disadvantages: will need a zip drive, not all computers will have them

...drives have been around for a few years now this price is dropping all the time. If you are wondering what 250MB of data storage will hold then think of a CD (Compact Disk); a zip disk can of 250MB can hold roughly half of what a CD can hold. That is pretty impressive as ZIP disks can be easily placed in a pocket and are not so delicate as CDs, for example CDs can be scratched easily and dust settling on them makes them not work. HOW A ZIP DRIVE WORKS (Briefly) When you insert a Zip disk into the drive, the metal sheild slides to one side to expose a small opening along the leading edge of the plastic case. A metal hub in the cookie is engaged by a motor that spins at 3,000 rpm. This gives the drive a faster access time than a regular floppy turning at 360 rpm. When the disk is fully inserted, the hole in its casing matches up with a hole... Read review

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Advantages: I Get Them For Free
Disadvantages: Low Storage, Easily Lost

...-- Preamble or Introduction if you want to call it that -- For those of you old enough to remember the early days of presonal computing. You will remember farting about with 5.25 inch disks which got crumpled and were notoriously unreliable. I first used them on a BBC micro way back in 1985, when I sold out and did a YTS (Youth Training (exploitation) Scheme). When i Bought an Amiga 600 it came with 3.5 inch floppy disk drive inbuilt, and the results were revolutionary to me anyway. To call them floppy was a bit of a misrepresentation as they were not floppy at all, this had the advantage that they did not crumple and if looked after properly they would not crumple like the old ones. -- What I Use Them For -- I have used Maxell MF2HD's for most of my proffessional life as an engineer and never had many problems with them. I use the ten... Read review

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Advantages: Affordable, cool design and handy strap.
Disadvantages: Its protective top is easy to misplace or lose.

...The PNY Attache 128mb data storage key is a fine piece of kit, which is a must have for anyone still carrying around data on a floppy disk. This data key slots easily into any USB connection point and then you can use it as you would a floppy drive - that is if you are running Windows 2000 upwards. I bought the PNY data storage key when I was still running the Windows 98 operating system and the system refused to accept the key, even with the drivers that PNY recommended you download from their very own website. This said, I have never had a problem on any system running Windows 2000 or above. The key holds the equivalent of roughly 80 floppy disks, comes with a handy strap (that can be disconnected if you wish) to keep round your neck and is extremely light. My only gripe is that the protective cap is easy to misplace or lose... Read review

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Advantages: small and lightweight, easy to use
Disadvantages: the keyring feature isn't strong

...I have just recently completed and successfully handed in my dissertation for my hospitality degree and relied heavily on this device. It is an amazing product and would reccomend this to everyone. I was in the process of completing an assignment for one of my many modules by using a floppy disk to save all my work on. As the floppy doesn't hold much information i was constantly opening up different folders on different disks and cutting and pasting the information that i needed onto my uni's hard drive. However, whilst i was constantly opening new documents on different disks, the disk drive made a noise and i lost all my work as the disk that was in the drive wasn't the one with my final work on and all the work that i had done that day deleted. I couldn't risk this happenning whilst i was completing my dissertation so i decided... Read review

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Advantages: back up all your work and password protect it
Disadvantages: ???????????????????????

...Zip disks are excelent. for example if your computer went completly wrong and you couldn't get back into your hard drive and you ended up reformating, you would loose all your files, programmes etc. all your work all that hard work! with zip disks you can back up all your work or just save it to there in the first place. maybe you have private stuff you do't want the rest of your familly to see you can password protect your disk. zip disks are basicaly floppy disks but much better. zip disks will hold 100-250 mb but a normal floppy will do 1.5 mb... Read review

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Advantages: Compact
Disadvantages: Small 1.44MB storage space

...PHONES NEAR FLOPPY DISKS Floppy disks are very expensive with some costing up to 50p or more each. At Uni they cost £1 for ONE. Lets use 20p as an example price per disk and say the standard hard drive is 80GB (which it roughly is now) it would cost £11959.12 to buy 80GB in floppy disks, when you can get an 80GB hard drive for about £40. Consider other alternatives for example, and which will save money in the long run ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 700MB CD-R's. Costs about £10 per pack of 100. 10p per disk. Costs £11.70 for 80GB, but each disk can only be written on once. 700MB CD-RW's. Costs about £10 per pack of 25. 40p per disk. Costs £46.81 for 80GB, but each disk can be written on again and again. 256MB USB Flash Disk. The prices range from £12 - £75 depending on the size... Read review

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Advantages: Floppy disks,MPEG Movies,Fairly easy to use.
Disadvantages: Bulky,Price!

...> this isn’t no ordinary Digital Camera it has a 4X Quick Access Floppy –Drive (which accounts for its bulk) and so that tells us that the pictures are saved to floppy discs and not digital memory sticks, this can be quite a saving as a box of 10 floppy discs costs £2 as opposed to £70 for a 8 MB memory stick (no contest)! But on the other hand can you be bothered to carry camera and box/s of discs around? (Buy a carry case? A Sony case will knock your pocket an extra £30 at least, I picked up a padded shoulder case new on a market stall for a £1 and it’s the BIZZ). As all the pictures are stored on floppy disk they are instantly compatible with your computer and no software is needed. This Mavica has a 1.3 million Mega-Pixel capability (not a lot by today’s standards but “enough”) this allows picture image... Read review

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Advantages: compact, easy to use, looks cool
Disadvantages: none

...I borrowed a friend's Zip 250 USB powered drive the other week, and have now just ordered one for myself. Costs around £80 from most computer and electrical shops. The plug and play feature is excellent: you don't need to restart the computer to use it, which is great for university; especially for large assignments, presentations and for downloading large files from the internet to take back to a home computer. the zip 250 definitely fills the gap between a floppy disk and the need for a CD-rewriter. Even if you have files that are larger than a 250 mb, they can be spanned across disks with the use of a file compression utility such as Winzip. The actual size and no-need for a separate power supply are further benefits in its favour. this makes the drive extrememly portable and easy to transport between computers. This drive... Read review

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