T 'n' T: Don't Forget the Floppy It's Hip To Be Square Gregg Keizer
Mon 7/1/02 -- Like Rodney Dangerfield, the floppy disk gets no respect. It's too small, too slow, too ancient, say the wags, to do much of anything. But it still shows up on virtually every PC, from the old to the brand-new. It's a 1.44MB constant in a technology world where CD-ROMs are replaced by CD-R and CD-R by CR-RW -- and thus still useful, says me.
In fact, I use floppies all the time, mostly to move files from one PC to another when a network's not present, or when I want to work from the comfort of an easy chair in front of the TV, not in my office 50 yards from the house. So I dedicate this week's Windows tips 'n' tricks to the storage common denominator -- the not-yet-forgotten floppy disk.
Gimme an A:. Putting a shortcut to your floppy drive on the desktop eliminates the need to open Windows Explorer, and makes for faster access to files on the disk. From the Windows desktop, double-click My Computer, right-click 3½ Floppy, and choose Create Shortcut. Drag the resulting icon to the desktop and drop it there.
Send files to the floppy. Instead of dragging and dropping or opening multiple windows in Explorer, try using the Send To menu to copy files from your hard disk to the floppy. Right-click on any folder in Windows Explorer, select the file (or files, pressing the Ctrl key while you click additional items) to copy, right-click, and select Send To from the pop-up menu. Choose "3½ Floppy (A:)," and they're on their way to the disk.
Faster floppy formatting. Sure, you can format a floppy disk from Windows Explorer or My Computer (right-click the drive and select "Format..." from the menu). But there's a faster way, at least if you're running Windows 95 or 98.
From the Start menu, select Programs, then MS-DOS Prompt. Type format a: /u and press Enter. (The /u parameter specifies an unconditional format, which yields faster results.) When I tested this on a Win 98 machine, formatting via DOS took approximately 20 percent less time than formatting from My Computer. (I tried the same trick on a Windows XP machine, too, but there was no time saving.)
Files too big for a floppy? Sometimes you need to move more files than will fit on one disk (remember when we used to say diskette?), but the floppy is all you have. No sweat, as long as you've armed both the source and destination machines with WinZip ($29) -- the most popular file compression or archiving utility for Windows, and a tool that should be on every PC you own.
The current version 8.1 supports disk spanning, splitting oversize files between two or more floppies, and handles it automatically: Simply create a zip file on the first floppy, then add files from the hard disk to the archive as you normally would. When the first disk fills up, WinZip asks for another (and another, and another, or however many it takes).
Put more on a floppy. A floppy holds just 1.44MB of files. Or does it? Actually, it can hold a bit more. Back in 1995, when Microsoft still distributed Windows and applications on floppies as well as CDs, the company figured out a way to cram more files onto a 3.5-inch disk. Called Distribution Media Format (DMF), this format packs approximately 1.63MB per floppy.
To format a 3.5-inch disk in DMF, you'll need WinImage, a $30 shareware utility. You only need one copy of WinImage, however, since once formatted in DMF, a floppy can be read and written to by any edition of Windows.
