Floppy drives, the good, the bad and the ugly

The year is 2022 and “yes!”, I am still using real floppy disks on my Commodore machines but sadly not as much as I used to. Now, don't get me wrong the floppy disk was a milestone in modern computing, enabling larger data capacities and more importantly fast access rates. However, in 2022, as much as I enjoy receiving the latest game release from Psytronik on an original disk, most of my practical everyday computing is much better served on a modern floppy disk emulator. I am, of course referring to an SD2IEC on my C64 and the Gotek floppy drive emulator on my trusty Amiga.

Amiga external Gotek drive

The SD2IEC is a relatively cheap device that, quite simply, enables D64 disk images to be saved and loaded from an SD card. The advantage of this, is that (unlike real floppy disks), errors are pretty much non existent. Using SD cards as well, means you can store and retrieve disk images from any modern PC, whether they are backups you've created or files downloaded from the Internet - and this makes sure your collection is secure. Of course, an added bonus to this (and something I take quite seriously) is that by holding these disk images digitally, we are preserving the legacy of the software – we are acting as digital archaeologists in a sense! Really, it's a win-win for everyone.