No Floppy Drive

The floppy disk has had a shorter lifespan than LP records .(What's that?) New computers are being sold with no 3.5 floppy disk drive. What do you do? There are a couple of inexpensive options. You can purchase an external floppy drive that plugs into a USB port. That is a good way to be able to access the few floppies you have left. But we can probably expect 3.5 floppies to cease to be available someday.

The best option for dealing with this change is to purchase a USB flash drive. These drives will fit in your pocket, purse, or briefcase. I bought bracelet flash drives for my grandsons. You can get key chain, and necklace flash drives. I even saw a picture of a hamburger flash drive. You can purchase a card reader for your camera card or video card that looks like and functions like a flash drive.

Four gigabyte flash drives are selling for $10 each right now. The flash drive is a portable place to store music, videos, pictures, and even homework. A 4 gig flash drive will hold as much data as 5892 floppy disks(3.5). Imagine putting that many floppies on a necklace. The flash drive is a plug in item. It plugs into a USB (universal serial bus) port.


While plugged in it acts like any othe drive on the computer. If you open the My Computer folder, it will show up with its own drive letter. After you remove it, the drive letter disappears. When saving, click file, then select save as. Then select the correct drive letter and save. Or drag the file you want to save and drop it into the flash drive. Some computers require a special "eject" procedure for safe removal of your flash drive. If you do not follow it, you could loose data. Be sure to read and follow any instructions that come with your drive.

Once you begin to save your files on a flash drive, be very careful to not misplace it. You can loose a lot of work, photos, or other important data very easily. Backup on a permanent drive is advisable.