The following is a guest article by Patrick Jobin. Storagepipe has been leading the way in providing ultra-modern online backup services for business since 2001.

One of the saddest realizations of my life was when a 18-year-old family friend pointed to the Save icon in MS Word and asked me what I thought that symbol might mean. That’s one of those moments when you begin to realize how old you are.

Yes, floppies are very old. But - believe it or not – they’re still alive and kicking.

Of course, you still see them being used for artistic and promotional purposes.

Many trendy bars and restaurants have tried to appeal to “geek chic” by plastering their walls with diskettes, using them as coasters, or grinding them up and mixing them into cement for a nice colourful effect. And craft people have used diskettes to create everything from clothing, to jewelry, to furniture.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean there are still a number of situations where floppies are still used as a storage device!

For example:

• Many organizations have very old, custom-written programs which support their operations. These applications might run on very old DOS-based systems, where the software isn't compatible with modern operating systems. Since this software still works fine for its purpose, the high costs associated with re-writing these programs would not be justified. As a result, reading and writing of data is restricted to the default format of that time period.
• Electronic hardware devices for commercial and industrial applications are designed to take a pounding and last for years under heavy use. That’s why you’ll often see cash registers, credit card machines, ATM machines and industrial machines which are still running perfectly after 20 years or more. And due to their age, they can only be programmed using 20 year old removable storage device standards.
• It’s also common for manufacturers of industrial equipment to avoid redesigning new features into a product that already works perfectly. Many CNC machines today still use floppy drives since their rugged construction makes them an ideal storage medium for the small input files which run these machines. CDs would simply be too fragile for these dirty and rugged applications, and networking capability would only introduce an unnecessary added level of complexity. Besides... if you work in a factory full of 30-year-old presses, robots, and mills, it’s nice to know that a single storage media can be used on all of them.
• Governments in developing countries have to operate on limited budgets. As a result, offices won’t consistently have access to state-of-the-art computer systems like we do in North America. This means that diskettes are still used as a standard protocol for data transfer. Even political agencies in North America might be required to submit documents in diskette format when performing official communications with foreign governments.
• Once a format has been established as an official government standard, the process of updating that standard can be slow and bureaucratic. As long as it still works, nobody will want to fix it. This applies in developing nations as much as developed ones. For example, US prisoners are only allowed to listen to music on cassette tapes.
• A well-maintained aircraft can have a very long life. As a result, there are many planes – still flying today – which rely on floppies to update their navigation systems and perform other routine electronic maintenance.

So if you have a few cases of floppies sitting around in the basement, don’t throw them out just yet. Somebody might need them someday.

Have you recently seen floppies being used for other purposes? Leave a comment below and let us know.