“I need to print out my English essay…okay, floppy in…and…WHAT?? It won’t open?!! NOOOO!!”

Unfortunately, the school computers here at RHS don’t accept floppies anymore, quite to the disdain of some students who can’t get their hands on any other method of saving work to transport from school to home and vice-versa.

So why this sudden change? According to the bi-monthly parent newsletter that goes out in the mail, “Floppy disks are becoming obsolete and never seem to survive trips to and from school tossed in backpacks.” Steve Bradley, the Rocklin Unified School District’s Network Administrator, said, “The answer is actually a simple one, the computers we purchase no longer come with [floppy drives].”

Many students ask about other alternatives that can be used to save work, and administrators recommend USB jump/flash drives: “[CompUSA] had 128 MB for only $15,” Bradley said. “The variation in storage sizes can hopefully make it easier to have a fit in everyone’s budget.”

Another data-saving option is a CD-ROM. “A CD-ROM is 700 MB and a DVD is 4.7 GB,” Bradley said.

Compare these options to the mere “…1.44 MB of data,” which Bradley believes is what a floppy disk holds. “RHS has some great programs and if you look at some of the digital pictures that you take, you will find that some will not fit on a single floppy disk,” Bradley said.

Floppy drives and disks are not bad; they are just being overrun by more advanced forms of saving data. In fact, Bradley said, “I personally would rather [the computers] have them, but it is a change made by the industry, not the school district.”