The Floppy Disk - one step closer to death

The old dinosaur of the tech world comes a little closer to finally popping its clogs. Sony, pretty much the last company still manufacturing floppy disks will stop from March of next year.

In various forms the old floppy disk drive (often abbreviated to FDD) has been around since around 1971. It started then with IBM’s 8” disk/drive. Shugart (who I think became Seagate?) brought out the 5.25” disk/drive around 1976.

HP brought out the 3.5” disk/drive in 1982. This format had the longest life and one still encounters them from time to time. I recently had to use one to load a RAID driver onto a PC.

In some respects the 3.5” disk was fantastic: light, small, fairly physically robust, cheap, decent storage capacity for the ‘80s. However, in other respects it was diabolical: magnetically sensitive, sensitive to dust, it wore down over time, by the mid to late ‘90s it was annoyingly short on capacity.

If you want to know more have a look at the Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disc

For more info also have a look at the Engadget entry here: http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/26/sony-shutting-down-japanese-floppy-disk-sales-by-march-2011-kil/

Comments

Where are SCANPST.EXE and/or SCANOST.EXE?

I sometimes have to deal with customer computers whose Outlook PST or OST files have become corrupted. Very often the fix is to run SCANPST.EXE on the offending PST/OST file. However, every time I go to do this I forget where the two executable files are. Here is where they are on a Vista machine running Office 2007: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 I hope this helps.

Resolve WSUS Server issue that gives "Cannot save configuration because the server is still processing"

This is a pretty infuriating error and can sometimes crop up as a result of running a "wsusutil reset" command. First of all, give the server some time, and then a bit more... but you've probably already done this. These steps may help to resolve the situation: - Install Microsoft SQL Management Studio (free download) - Run SQL Management Studio and start to connect to the WSUS database - Enter this in the "Server Name" box: \\.\pipe\MICROSOFT##WID\tsql\query - Expand the "Databases" tree - Right-click on "SUSDB" and choose "New Query" - Paste this query in: UPDATE tbSingletonData SET ResetStateMachineNeeded = 0 - You should see a message like "1 row affected", which is good - Quit SQL Management Studio - Open "Services" and restart the "WSUS Service" - Now, open WSUS

Logon Scripts in Group Policy not running

Problem Was having difficulty with a logon script I had created and was deploying to users via Group Policy. The script was to customise printer settings for certain users. But it just wasn't running when the users would logon to their PCs. The GPO was applying properly, and I could run the script manually without issue. Cause It turns out that it was happening because, by default, logon scripts don't run for 5 mins after logon occurs on a Windows client PC. Solution This can be adjusted by setting the "Configure Logon Script Delay policy" to "Enabled" and then configuring a better delay. Note: if this policy is set to disabled or not configured, the default delay of 5 mins will apply. I initially set this delay to "0" but found that wasn't successful. Perhaps the script needed a small delay. So I set it to "1" (1 minute) and it worked nicely. I must also note that during the troubleshooting process, I read many recommendations to e...

Artifact Weblog

Search This Blog