The following is a partial list of more reliable alternatives to using a floppy disk for personal storage.

USB Flash Drive: Available in various sizes up to multiple gigabytes. These devices are very small and reliable. For more information about using USB drives see Academic Computing's guide on USB Drive Use.

Zip Disk: 250MB Zip drives are available in most facilities managed by Academic Computing. For more information about using Zip drives see Academic Computing's Guide on Zip Drive Use.

Thaw Space: For temporary storage of assignments and related files we provide a T: drive on each PC. The T: drive should be used instead of the desktop or any other location on the local hard disk drive. In the case of a computer freezing or rebooting for some reason, the changes that have been made to the desktop or any other part of the hard drive are reset and all files are lost. The T: drive, however, is not erased in theses instances.

Email Attachment: Smaller files can be easily emailed to yourself and collected later.

FTP: For larger files FTP (File Transfer Protocol) can be an easy way to move your file electronically. Move the file to a server and collect it later. The amount of space available will be dependent upon your server.

USB Floppy Drive: A workaround for those that absolutely must have a floppy drive. USB floppy drives are available from many stores. These drives can be used similarly to the USB flash drive. Note that USB floppy drives usually will not work when chained (e.g. plugged into a keyboard). Even if one's home computer does not have USB, a typical USB floppy drive is more expensive than buying both a 128MB USB flash drive and a PCI card containing 2 or more USB 2.0 ports.