Use in the early 21st century

Floppy disks are acclimated for emergency boots in crumbling systems defective abutment for added bootable media, and for BIOS updates back best BIOS and firmware programs can still be accomplished from bootable billowing disks. If BIOS updates abort or become corrupt, billowing drives can sometimes be acclimated to accomplish a recovery. The music and theatre industries still use accessories acute accepted billowing disks (e.g. synthesizers, samplers, boom machines, sequencers, and lighting consoles). Automated automation accessories such as programmable accouterment and automated robots may not acquire a USB interface; abstracts and programs are again loaded from disks, damageable in automated environments. This may not be replaced due to amount or claim for connected availability; absolutecomputer application appetite and virtualization do not break this botheration because no operating arrangement is present or a customized operating arrangement is acclimated that has no drivers for USB devices. Hardware billowing deejay emulators can be fabricated to interface billowing deejay controllers to a USB anchorage that for beam drives; several manufacturers accomplish such emulators.

Some anachronous systems still crave billowing disks to operate; for instance, tax authorities and the Pension Fund of Russia, as of 2011, still acquire or alike crave cyberbanking letters to be submitted on billowing disks.citation needed

For added than two decades, the billowing deejay was the primary alien writable accumulator accessory used. Best accretion environments afore the 1990s were non-networked and billowing disks were the primary agency of appointment abstracts amid computers, a adjustment accepted artlessly as sneakernet. Unlike adamantine disks, billowing disks are handled and seen; alike a amateur user can analyze a billowing disk. Because of these factors, a account of a 3 1⁄2" billowing deejay has become a allegory for extenuative data. The billowing deejay attribute is still acclimated bycomputer application on user interface elements accompanying to extenuative files, such as the absolution of Microsoft Office 2010, alike admitting such disks are more obsolete.10