Katana VentraIP

Floppy disk

A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy or a diskette) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a fabric that removes dust particles from the spinning disk. Floppy disks store digital data which can be read and written when the disk is inserted into a floppy disk drive (FDD) connected to or inside a computer or other device.

"Floppy" redirects here. For other uses, see Floppy (disambiguation).

The first floppy disks, invented and made by IBM in 1971,[1] had a disk diameter of 8 inches (203.2 mm).[2] Subsequently, the 5¼-inch (133.4 mm) and then the 3½-inch (88.9 mm) became a ubiquitous form of data storage and transfer into the first years of the 21st century.[3] 3½-inch floppy disks can still be used with an external USB floppy disk drive. USB drives for 5¼-inch, 8-inch, and other-size floppy disks are rare to non-existent. Some individuals and organizations continue to use older equipment to read or transfer data from floppy disks.


Floppy disks were so common in late 20th-century culture that many electronic and software programs continue to use save icons that look like floppy disks well into the 21st century, as a form of skeuomorphic design. While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy industrial computer equipment, they have been superseded by data storage methods with much greater data storage capacity and data transfer speed, such as USB flash drives, memory cards, optical discs, and storage available through local computer networks and cloud storage.

DD: 2 μm magnetic

iron oxide

HD: 1.2 μm -doped iron oxide

cobalt

ED: 3 μm

barium ferrite

otherwise similar to 5¼-inch floppies were proposed by Tabor and Dysan.

3¼-inch floppies

Three-inch disks similar in construction to 3½-inch were manufactured and used for a time, particularly by computers and word processors.

Amstrad

A two-inch nominal size known as the was introduced by Sony for use with its Mavica still video camera.[39]

Video Floppy

An incompatible two-inch floppy produced by Fujifilm called the LT-1 was used in the portable computer.[40]

Zenith Minisport

for 3½-inch floppy drive

Berg connector

dd (Unix)

Disk image

Don't Copy That Floppy

Floppy disk controller

Floppy disk hardware emulator

Floppy disk variants

Hard disk drive

History of the floppy disk

List of floppy disk formats

– popular mainly for 8-inch drives, and partially for 5¼-inch

Shugart bus

XDF

copy tool (retries on errors, over-formatted floppies), DOS, discontinued

VGA-Copy

MO disc

Zip drive

Weyhrich, Steven (2005). : A detailed essay describing one of the first commercial floppy disk drives (from the Apple II History website).

"The Disk II"

Immers, Richard; Neufeld, Gerald G. (1984). Inside Commodore DOS: The Complete Guide to the 1541 Disk Operating System. Datamost & Reston Publishing Company (Prentice-Hall).  0-8359-3091-2.

ISBN

Englisch, Lothar; Szczepanowski, Norbert (1984). The Anatomy of the 1541 Disk Drive. Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, Abacus Software (translated from the original 1983 German edition, Düsseldorf, Data Becker GmbH).  0-916439-01-1.

ISBN

Hewlett Packard: 9121D/S Disc Memory Operator's Manual; printed 1 September 1982; .

part number 09121-90000

HowStuffWorks: How Floppy Disk Drives Work

Computer Hope: Information about computer floppy drives

(mention of ANSI X3.162 and X3.171 floppy standards)

NCITS

Floppy disk drives and media technical information

The Floppy User Guide -historical technical material

Archived 17 September 2018 at the Wayback Machine

Summary of Floppy Disk Types and Specifications