Windows 7 Downloads

[Snektron]

IIRC if you buy this you get a box with like 8K floppy disks

[Dream of Omnimaga]

I am sure that is fake, though, and I am curious if any store sells packs of floppy disks anymore nowadays? I know that some stores still sold empty audio cassettes and VHS tapes until just a few years ago.

[novenary]

Hmmm let's see. A Windows 8.1 ISO is 3.7GB, (3,809,480KB). A 3½" floppy disk is 1440KB, so you would need 2646 to fit the entire image. It is probably possible to use the entire 2MB on each disk, in which case 1861 would be enough, but there is still some overhead per disk to take into account (you can't just put pieces of the ISO on there, but rather individual files so the 1.44MB scenario is more realistic, and you'd end up actually using quite a bit more due to empty space on each disk (even though it should be optimized as much as possible).

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Wait, do you mean that there's extra space besides the 1440 KB? That said, it's not much useful if there is, since nobody uses floppy disks anymore nowadays.


The worst part would be installing a modern OS from them. Not only it would take ages to swap the floppy disks one by one in the floppy drive, but they are so slow it would probably take 6 months to install the OS.

[novenary]

Wait, do you mean that there's extra space besides the 1440 KB? That said, it's not much useful if there is, since nobody uses floppy disks anymore nowadays.

Yeah they are actually 2MB but the filesystem takes a good part away.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

That's interesting. I would have thought that floppy disks simply used the computer OS' file system routines.

[novenary]

Yeah the filesystem is implemented by the OS but it has to be stored on the disk, how do you think it would find the files otherwise ?

[Dream of Omnimaga]

I didn't even know it needed to do that.

[novenary]

Well it's like the VAT on TI calcs, it needs to be somewhere. And that somewhere is the floppy disk itself which is the most logical location.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Ah I see then. I thought the file system was what made the files show up, rather than the content, so I thought it was just a routine from the operating system running from the hard drive.


On a side note, imagine how slow Windows would be if it was on a floppy disk

[Snektron]

That said, it's not much useful if there is, since nobody uses floppy disks anymore nowadays.

My dad still has some, i think his pc has a floppy disk reader too. Then again, he is a streetwalrus-level linux guy

[Dream of Omnimaga]

You could invite him to CW?

And yeah I still have lots of floppies, but nothing to read their content.

[brentmaas]

I found a floppy drive about half a year ago, only €1

[Dream of Omnimaga]

YEah those aren't sold here anymore since years ago. If I want a floppy drive I would most likely have to seek online, and hope that it actually works.

[Snektron]

You could invite him to CW?

Please no >.<
he would probably be the oldest member though