Is the floppy disk still being used. A friend of mine bought a new cpu two weeks ago and it had a floppy drive.

There are still some, if not few, companies who are using floppy drives. But I think it will be extinct sooner or later. USB flash disks are better and faster than floppy disks.

The only thing that a floppy drive could be used for is when you need a floppy drive start up. This usually happens when your operating system is damaged by a virus and you need a system recovery.

Well technically yes. Many of the PC manufacturers still have the floppy disk option in order to increase the secondary storage options for a computer. However people hardly use floppy disk these days. I had never used them in my PC so far. I think they would eventually phase out floppy disk options gradually from PC.

You'd be suprised many windows servers still come with a floppy drive! lol , they have there uses although ideally manufacturers should be targeting USB for an alternative rather than using Floppy Disks also Microsoft should be aiming that way. I think Windows 7 gives this option now on installing additional drivers.

This is an alternative for applications that require a floppy drive to install data!

http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html

I'd be curious to know what kind of computer he bought. I haven't seen a workstation or laptop with a floppy drive in many years. With thumb drives so readily available and inexpensive, I'm surprised that these are still around.

the last computer I got did not come with a floppy disk.. with pen drives and dvd recorders, I really don't see a reason to have them nowadays!

My current computer doesn't have a floppy drive anymore. A floppy disk has very limited capacity compared to a CD, DVD or flashdisk. I don't see the need of using it.

There are some uses-some small utilities, such as FDisk, and some small Linux live distros that can be of use to a damaged system. Beyond that there isn't much use now.