Ask HN: What alternatives to floppy disks exist?

[xavel]

For a long time, floppy disks where the best way to cheaply share data with other people on a hardware basis. It was good for plenty reasons: floppy disks don't cost much, they're reusable, are arguably good at keeping their data (as long as you keep them away from anything magnetic), and had a reasonably long life expectancy, at least considering the materials they're made of.

Nowadays, the best thing that would come close to floppy disks are SD cards and usb sticks. And even though both sd cards and usbsticks are becoming cheaper every day, they're still nowhere near as cheap as floppy disks. And I can't think of anyone who would be hoarding hundreds of USB sticks, just to give them away never to be seen again. Additionally, and more obviously, floppy disks can no longer keep up with modern technology: they don't allow to store much information at all (roughly 2MB is less than peanuts nowadays. Most of my PDF documents are twice the size), and hardly anyone I know of even has a floppy disk drive anymore.

Of course I know about CDroms -- but the thing about CDs is, they require a CDburner, and the process requires a while. Certainly not as much as it used to, but this factor persists. Also, unless you use CDRW, the data is permanently stored onto it, and if you no longer need it, it just becomes a pice of worthless, non-resuable plastic.

So what alternatives are there, alternatives that don't involve cloud sharing? What hardware-based mediums do we have that allows sharing data in a cheap, disposable way, that doesn't require me to store data on the internet?

What is there to expect in the future?

[tjr]

This looks like a possibility: http://www.amazon.com/4GB-Metal-Key-Flash-Drive/dp/B005OP2JQ...

I honestly do not remember how much floppy disks used to cost; it's been... probably over a decade since I bought one. But $1.26 seems pretty reasonable for such a use.

[dangrossman]

That's not $1.26, that's about $5. The actual postage to ship something that small would be $1-2, but they're charging $5, which means the shipping cost is really just a way to make the purchase price look smaller.

[gboone42]

Given that a 4GB USB key holds roughly 2844x more data than your average floppy disk, I'd say $5 is a steal!

[tjr]

Thanks!

[FurrBall]

7 bucks shipped. And you can't save on shipping with a batch order. Not as disposable as a floppy but getting close.

I foresee the day we can buy $1 flash drives at the local dollar store. Relative to inflation.

[osivertsson]

There are no alternatives, and nothing to be expected in the future, because packet-based networks has made it obsolete as the primary sharing method between people. No market left. No economies of scale.

If you really don't want the information (even encrypted) to travel over networks you don't control, then you probably can afford SD cards or USB sticks or more esoteric special constructions.

Can you elaborate on why you feel a need for such physical media?

[xavel]

>Can you elaborate on why you feel a need for such physical media?

Maybe it's not perceived the same way in the USA, but in Europe, most people who use cloud-services find it increasingly difficult to trust american cloud-services, thanks to the NSA. Hence why I'm looking for alternative ways to share sensitive information, programs, documents, you name it.

There's of course also owncloud, which is nice enough, but let's just assume that some may not even have access to the internet in the first place.

So, with respect to the point you made (make no mistake, it's a very good point), I say that there are scenarios that justify need for physical mediums to share data.

[osivertsson]

I'm in Europe (Sweden), and while a lot of people on HN and in the tech community care, most other people I know here just don't have this on their top 100 list of things they worry about.

That said, I agree that sensitive or not, we really shouldn't be sharing everything over only a handful of communication channels (typically home & work broadband connection + mobile phone data connection). It makes surveillance all too easy.

This is where I think smart people could make a difference. When I want to share data with someone in the same location as me we should really be talking P2P only. It wouldn't allow NSA & co to get the same full picture as easy as they can now with central data hubs and only a few communication channels.

[xavel]

I'm from Germany, so I see what you mean -- in Europe, especially central and northern europe, there's hardly any need to share files physically. But alternatives are necessary in times like these, which is why I'm glad things like P2P-services exist.

I guess you could say I'm merely planning for the future. Not that I wish that I'd ever actually have to go about sharing data via physical mediums, but I wouldn't exactly bet on it.

[zellio]

You can purchase USB keys in bulk for around 1.50 U$D. How is this not a viable solution? Floppy disks today seem to cost only about half that price.

[xavel]

1.50$ for an entire pack of USB sticks? Where did you find such an offer? Because according to amazon, the cheapest they have are a pack of 10 USB sticks, 1GB, for 39$:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E3MII96/

Not exactly cheap, if you ask me. Not exactly super-expensive either, of course, but definitely not cheap. And I think the reasons the price for floppy disks doesn't seem to go down is because only certain people still use floppy disks, i.e., the need for floppy disks is nearly non-existant.

[dangrossman]

Amazon is virtually never the best price on items <$5. They carry very, very few items in that price range outside their "addon" program (items that only ship with $25+ in other goods) -- what you linked is an ad for a product sold by another store.

eBay, Alibaba, or contacting the wholesale division of any of the stores you get searching "bulk flash drive" on Google would be a better idea. They start around $2.50/drive retail with your logo custom printed, so you can do much better wholesale.

[osivertsson]

And for the price you even get all the weirdness of file corruption, sometimes works sometimes not, and data-loss that you had with the cheapest no-name floppies back in the day ;-)