Floppy disks are small, removable media storage devices that use a thin circular magnetic film enclosed in a plastic sheath. They were replaced by flash memory and rewritable CD storage devices. The original floppy disks were 8-inch, but the most widely used were 5.25-inch disks. Later, 3.5-inch disks were introduced, with hard cases for protection. Floppy disks have been largely replaced by other storage devices, and most laptops and desktops no longer include a floppy drive.
Floppy disks are small, removable media storage devices. They record data on a thin circular magnetic film enclosed in a flat, square plastic sheath. This type of media is a bit antiquated, having been replaced by flash memory and rewritable CD storage devices.
The original floppy disks were 8-inch (20.32 cm) floppies used in 1971-1975, but the first to be widely used commercially were 5.25-inch (13.335 cm) disks. They were quite flexible and required a floppy drive of the same size. Disks can store up to 360 kilobytes (KB) of data, or about one-third of a single megabyte. Later, high-density floppies held 1.2 megabytes (MB) of data. These were used extensively until about 1987.
As floppy disk technology improved, the next generation was smaller and eventually held more data. The new 3.5-inch (8.89 cm) disks also had hard cases for protection, making them less floppy, although the term floppy disk was still used for many years, anyway. Some used only one side of the internal magnetic film to record data, giving them a capacity of 744KB. High-density 3.5-inch floppies doubled in capacity to 1.44MB. Indeed, there were several configurations, including single or double sided (SS or DS) and single or double density (SD or DD).
An easy way to spot the smaller capacity diskette was to look at the top corners of the case or case. If the puck had only one hole to the right, it was a single-sided puck. The hole in the upper right corner of the disc included a small plastic tab, which allowed the user to write-protect the disc.
Since double-density floppy disks were cheaper than their higher-capacity high-density cousins, some people in the know bought the cheaper disks, then punched a hole in the upper left corner to convert the disk to a floppy disk. high density double sided . All discs contained a polyester film called BoPET, better known as Mylar®, coated on both sides with the necessary magnetic material. Drilling a second hole in the case allowed the floppy drive to spin the film in the opposite direction, thus using both sides.
Several technologies have been used since 1991 in attempts to extend the life of floppies by increasing their capacity to 2.88MB (extended density, or ED), and even to 120MB and 240MB (LS-120 and LS-240, respectively). None of these technologies have caught on, however. The former proved too small a capacity increase for ubiquitous adoption, and the latter proved to be an unreliable form of storage.
Today, other more convenient and robust storage devices, such as compact disks and flash memory, have largely replaced floppy disks. A CD can hold up to 600MB, and even the smallest capacity memory stick can hold several hundred times the amount of a single floppy. Some memory sticks now compete with smaller hard drives for disk capacity, making them ideal for transferring files, programs, or even entire volumes.
A real sign that floppy disks are nearly obsolete is that most laptops no longer come with a floppy drive, and many desktop systems don’t include this drive unless required. However, some people still use diskettes for backing up and transferring small files.
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