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Remembering the Floppy Disk
By Al Gordon | January 17, 2007
A major computing milestone passed by not too long ago and no
one noted it: the effective end of the floppy disk.
As computer devices go, the 1.44 MB, 3.5″, double-sided floppy
was a veritable Methuselah. It came into widespread use in
around 1990 (when IBM adopted it for its latest PCs; Apple much
earlier had adopted a 720 KB, one-sided variety for the
Macintosh), and it remained an industry standard for roughly 15
years.
Curiously, the 3.5″ floppy kept the “floppy” nomenclature even
though it encased its magnetic media in a hard plastic case. The
old 5.25″ disks used in the original IBM PCs actually were
floppy.
In any case, the disks were all-in-all a pretty handy medium. A
PC could be booted from one. It could hold a fairly large number
of word processing documents and spreadsheets. Long before users
set up home networks, file transfer via “sneaker net” - copying
from one PC to floppy and then copying from the floppy to
another PC - was a well-established practice.
Ultimately, of course, multimedia and escalating file sizes did
the floppy in. CD drives and flash memory sticks with the
capacity of scores of floppies are now the favored medium for
physically transferring files. At some point - I would guess it
was some time in the last two or three years - the number of
computers sold without floppies exceeded the number sold with
them, and that effectively marked the end of the floppy as a
standard.
Aside from marking the end of an era, the end of the floppy also
marks a particular computing problem: what to do with the data
on your old floppies. Remember, once your last PC with a floppy
drive is gone, those disks are effectively unreadable. So now is
the time to take your floppies and burn them on a CD.
Which in itself is a lesson: One CD will take the place of about
485 floppies.
(c) 2007 Al Gordon.
In addition to his computer interests, Al Gordon is a principal
in the Boston-area strategic consulting firm, Mary Fifield
Associates, www.maryfifieldassociates.com.
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11 Responses to “Remembering the Floppy Disk”
Comments
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January 17th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
My comment on the article is this: I would recommend using a flashdrive instead of a CD to backup my floppies because CD can easily be damaged and flashdrives are very reliable, transportable, have a large capacity, and are very durable. I have actually backedup all of my floppies and CD’s on 1 flashdrive.
January 17th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Nice homage to the floppy. Yes, I have many 3.5s and 5.25s, but I also have 8″ floppies in my archive room! Another question: What to do with the containers that hold all that obsolete media? Ironically, the cases for 5.25″ floppies work very well for CDs. Others can be recycled; remember, all of your CDs, DVDs, floppies, and even tapes can be recycled–please don’t toss them in the landfill!
January 17th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
I migrated my floppies to CD’s a number of years ago. I still order my systems with one as it does still handle small files well but I use them less and less. Not for storage.
On Robyns comment - Flash drives can be corrupted if for example theres a power loss during a copy. And there are fewer data recovery tools for them. Also note, they are designed for temporary storage so will loose their data much faster than a CD. If you are concerned about CD damage, make a second backup - they’re cheap enough. And there are kits for removing CD scratches. But don’t expect your flash drive to be a permanent backup.
USB hard drives are another solution but again, any magnetic media does deteriorate over time. CD dyes are more stable. I have some old video tapes I’m dubbing to DVD as they have started to go.
Tape backups used to be common but they suffer significantly from usage, like a CD-RW. Once reliable, they deteriorate with age. SO if you are using RW’s for backup, make sure data verification is turned on.
January 17th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Apparently news of the floppy’s demise hasn’t reached Redmond. The XP password reset wizard still only works with 3.5″ floppies.
January 18th, 2007 at 4:55 am
[…] http://www.tnpcnewsletter.com/blog/2007/01/17/remembering-the-floppy-disk/ […]
January 18th, 2007 at 6:56 am
Did you ever try to set up Winxp on a computer with a Sata drive that needs the drivers. Only with a floppy Microsoft hasn’t heard that it’s dead yet
January 18th, 2007 at 10:25 am
My laptop came with an external 3.5″ drive that connects via a USB port so I (and many others) will continue to be able to use the ‘floppies’ for some time to come.
January 18th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
When I saw the 3.5 floppies were no longer built in, I purchased a USB floppy drive to save myself the problem of converting all those files to another medium. They still serve a useful niche.
January 18th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
I agree that floppies are still occasionally useful, and purchased an external USB drive for my laptop. BTW, I always figured even 3.5″ discs are still floppy, since the disc inside the plastic case is magnetic and not rigid! Reliability did seem to get better with the plastic case small enough to put in your shirt pocket (if it wasn’t already loaded with pens!).
January 27th, 2007 at 4:22 am
[…] Original post by Al Gordon and software by Elliott Back […]
August 6th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Stupid trend, laptop without floppy disk,
I got floppy disks from my trips back on campus (Wharton and harvard law bookstores,..) I still own them, but I lose my 5 months old CD just like that. I may NOT own a loptop without floppy disk because CD are too expensive with short lifetime (too expensive). Good for Music business without cassette but here, we still like our floppy disk cheap with very long life
Arthur Mboue