Floppy A diskette

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

Today I was looking all over the faculty to get a floppy A diskette - a type of computer information storage that is nearly extinct. I needed it to make a boot disc to install Windows operating system in my new Mac so that I can have 2 platforms in 1 laptop. Alhamdulillah, the operation was a success after so many trials since I bought this new laptop about a month ago.

It is so amazing how technology moves so fast that things become out-of-date, either quickly or gradually. I remember that diskette is the easiest means for us to store information from computer when I was at university (nearly 10 years ago). We used to use WinZip all the times to store a file that is more than 1.44MB - seriously 1.44MB! How did we survive at that time? And before diskette, we have that type thin black plastic floppy which measures 8 inches and stores 1.2MB, joke!

Later, when I discovered CD-R which can store 700MB (depends on the CD-R), I bought a CD-writer and assembled it to my PC, that was way before many used CD-R. I was thrill at that discovery and that breakthrough really helped my study a lot when we have to do multimedia programmes as assignments. When CD-R and CD-RW was no more something uncommon, I bought a laptop which can burn DVDs - that gives me at least 4.0GB of storage (again, depends of the DVD-R)! Another breakthrough. Now, we have blu-ray and God knows what's next. Today, none of my laptops have even a floppy drive to read a floppy disc. The new Mac Air Book doesn't even have a CD/DVD-ROM yet can read CD/DVD remotely from another computer/laptop!

Of course, we have stuff like external USB-based storage, i.e., memory stick/pen drive, Zipdrive and also memory cards (many types of them) and now SDHC that can store up to 12GB in one small memory card. Conventional hard disc drive (HD-RAM) spins, that's why we need to defrag it once in a while. Now there is this new Solid State Drive where there is no more spinning hard drive but a file is located in the hard drive directly!

Looking back into today's incident to find a diskette to make a boot disc, it really reminds me of how fast time flies and how easily we can get behind if we don't catch up. I'm not just talking about technology but knowledge. If we don't learn today, there will be more stuff to learn tomorrow and we will never be able to catch up unless we have that ability to pick up things fast and have good teacher that can give us a crash course from scratch.

ALLAHU'alam.

Wassalam.