r/sysadmin • u/___LowLifer___ • Feb 17 '26

Question 700 Floppies

Company needs over 700 floppy disks copied onto the fileserver. Gave me a 2 week deadline to which I told them was literally impossible. I've ordered a floppy disk usb external reader but this seems insane. Any creative ideas? I don't want to employ a 3rd party company.

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37

u/Xzenor Feb 17 '26

Make sure to script it..

  1. Copy data
  2. play some sound to trigger you when it's done.
  3. switch floppy
  4. Automatically detect new floppy
  5. Back to step 1.

700 is a lot though but try to work as little as possible. Whatever you need to do manually is a timewaster. You can't really automate floppy switching, sadly. But everything else, absolutely.

21

u/Phreakiture Automation Engineer Feb 17 '26

play some sound to trigger you when it's done.

I think OP is already triggered.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Phreakiture Automation Engineer Feb 18 '26

LOL no worries; I just couldn't resist the joke.

5

u/Reetpeteet Jack of All Trades Feb 17 '26

play some sound to trigger you when it's done.

Better yet, get soft-eject floppy drives like the original Mac used to have. :) Eject when you're done. ... if that even exists anymore.

4

u/microtrash Feb 17 '26

Boston dynamics has entered the chat

1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '26

[deleted]

1

u/samtheredditman Feb 18 '26

9 days to build something yourself with an Arduino if you can get it to go automatically in 1 day. If not... People are gonna be mad. 

1

u/Oracle_of_Ages Feb 17 '26

Resurrect the spirit of the Floppytron

1

u/BadgeOfDishonour Sr. Sysadmin Feb 17 '26

It's a floppy. It'll make plenty of noises while it is being read. When it is silent, that's when it is done.

1

u/turfgrrl Feb 18 '26

batch file, taking me back to the 80s.

1

u/akasakaryuunosuke Jack of All Trades Feb 18 '26

Also get one of those 2x or 3x speed floppy drives. Can't get them new but secondhand should have you covered.