I'll just stick it here, since my public blog has my real name on it:
I’m sure everyone out there knows what a floppy disk, or diskette, refers to. For the uneducated, a diskette is a small squarish object that is 3.5" inches on each side, gets inserted into a drive made specially for them in a computer, and is used to store files.
If you’ve never heard of such a thing, chances are you have a newer computer. Diskette drives were standard equipment for much of the 1980s and 1990s and were still included on the majority of computers until a few years ago. Apple’s Macintosh line was the first to purge the disks in 1998 (ironically, it was the Macintosh that made the 3.5" diskette popular upon its introduction in 1984) followed by laptops from any company and PC makers around 2003. Floppy drives are optional on many computers today, standard on only a handful, and can be easily added to any motherboard that has a connector and support for them.
In the past, floppies were a primary means of storage. Hard drives were too expensive to be practical and systems would often ship with two floppy drives--one for the operating system or the program and one for a data disk. In those days, floppies were actually floppy--they measured 5.25" on each side and were not enclosed in the hardshell case found in modern diskettes.
In 1987, the 3.5" floppy hit the mainstream PC line in full force, appearing in IBM’s PS/2 and Toshiba’s early laptops. While it had been available prior to that date, it was not yet as popular as its more affordable and larger cousin.
Hard drives began to become popular in the late 1980s and were standard in all computers by the mid 1990s. While some systems shipped with two floppies and one hard drive (especially if the system had both a 3.5" and 5.25" drive), most lost their second drive in favor of the floppy.
On DOS and Windows systems, floppies are sometimes referred to as "disks in the A drive". On a two floppy system, the second drive is known as the "B drive". This explains why the hard drive, which logically comes after the two supported floppy drives, is designated by the letter "C". (If you’ve ever wondered why the letter B gets skipped on a newer PC, this is the reason--it’s a shame, I happen to like that letter as my last name begins with one).
Macintoshes are harder to spot with two internal floppy drives. Only the Macintosh SE, Macintosh SE SuperDrive, Macintosh LC, Macintosh II, Macintosh IIx, and Macintosh IIfx support two floppy drives internally. In the case of either SE model or the original LC, the second drive was generally removed if a hard drive was installed just as it was on most PC models, including the IBM PS/2. (There was a special bracket available for the SE, however, that let the hard drive be mounted in a way that both floppy drives were useable). On the older Apple II models, drives were always external with the exception of the semi-portable IIc and IIc Plus. Most systems came with two drives and a combination unit containing two 5.25" drives, known as the DuoDisk, was available for some time in the mid 1980s. The Macintosh line has always used 3.5" disks exclusively while the Apple II series, like the IBM PC and compatibles, have used both.
Capacities vary greatly by system and the type of disk. Originally, 5.25" disks held 143K per side on an Apple II and 180K on an IBM PC (when formatted using only one side of the disk). An Apple II’s disk could be flipped to use the second side of the disk by ejecting the disk and literally turning it over. A tool known as a "disk notcher" was needed in many cases so that a read/write hole could be created for the second side. (I actually own a disk notcher).
The IBM PC did things differently. Instead of requiring the disk to be flipped, the drive would format the disk on both sides to be used as a single volume. This brought the capacity of a DS/DD diskette (double sided, double density) to 360K.
3.5" disks held 400K on the original Macintosh and 360K on an IBM PC under the single-sided format setting. The capacity grew to 800K on a Macintosh or 720K on an IBM when formatted as double density, using the same technique as the IBM PC’s floppy drive.
In 1987, IBM began to ship high density drives with some of its PS/2 computers. Other companies followed suit. High density versions of both 3.5" and 5.25" disks became available. The high density 5.25" disk on an IBM held 1.2MB.
The capacity of 1.4MB (an accurate amount on a Macintosh, the capacity is actually 1.44MB on a PC) that everyone knows today is that of the high density disk. Following the standardization of the feature across all lines (most every computer in production had a high density 3.5" drive by 1991) led to its dominance as the primary format. The disks were initially unpopular, as they cost more than their lower density counterparts, but the difference in price became nonexistent by the end of the 1990s.
An extended density format, holding 2.88MB, was an attempt on the IBM platform to further expand the capacity of a 3.5" floppy disk. Unpopular and expensive, the extended density disk failed and is considered a rarity today. They were available for a brief period in the early 1990s.
"Superfloppy" drives such as the Iomega Zip Disk (which held 100MB) attempted to silence the floppy, yet the drives kept shipping with new computers. They were the only way of distributing software until the advent of CD-ROM, which soon made shipping software on floppies impractical. (Find a set of Office 97 floppy disks--there are about 35 or so of them--if you need a good reason to appreciate CD-ROMs).
The Zip Drive and its competitors did not catch on because of the floppy’s universal presence and relatively low cost (even if the cost per megabyte was very high).
By 1998, floppy drives were appearing in every computer in the 3.5" high density version. Very few computers came with the older 5.25" drive or shipped with two drives by that point--in fact, only customized computers were coming in those configurations.
It was Apple who boldly pulled the plug on floppy diskettes. They declared the floppy to be obsolete when the original iMac shipped without one. Users were encouraged to use the internet to send and back up files. However, those with many old floppies around--either from work files or old programs purchased years before the iMac came out--were forced to buy a USB floppy drive. The market for those drives became considerably large between 1998 and 2000, with many vendors selling nearly identical products to make a few extra dollars. No Apple made since early 1999 has come with a floppy drive. CD-R has also been viewed as a potential replacement for the floppy in Apple’s eyes--the drives became available on the iMac in 1999.
Small-size laptops were the first non-Apple computers to eliminate the floppy drive. Dell, HP, and the other companies began to follow Apple’s suit in 2003 in their desktops. Some made the drives optional. In many cases of customization, such as the web purchase orders taken by IBM, floppy drives were standard equipment that could be subtracted. The cost of $15 was low enough to convince most folks to buy floppy drives anyways, especially older computer users who had backed up many years of work on floppies and were used to using them.
The advent of the Memory Key (in IBM’s terms; some call it a flash drive) placed a rather large nail in the still unsealed coffin of the floppy disk. It was as portable if not more portable than a floppy, could be written to and deleted from like a floppy (a CD-RW does not allow this to be done easily), and has cost less and less each year. They are fast and large in storage capacity, ranging from 32MB to several hundred gigabytes--or hundreds of boxes of floppies per drive!
Floppies have reached new lows in pricing. Many boxes can be purchased for $4 or $5 these days (for ten disks). The number of manufacturers of floppy diskettes has also decreased--it was common to find six or seven vendors of floppies in the same store in the mid 1990s while today any one store may only carry one or two brands of floppy disks. As always, Imation (formerly 3M) provides the best quality disks, but even Imation has used cost-cutting techniques. First, the wrap-around labels were replaced by labels that do not wrap around the disks. Next, the colour coding of these labels disappeared. Finally, some companies have introduced disks without any labels at all in the box, forcing users to write on the disks with permanent markers.
Do the floppies still have a loyal following? Indeed they do. Anyone with older computers lacking USB ports will have a good use for floppies, as it may be the only way to get the information from one system to another. Unfortunately, the capacity of a floppy disk often makes this difficult--try putting a large Excel spreadsheet on one! There are also longtime floppy users who continue to use the disks for backups, although they are quickly finding that the larger file formats of today’s applications (notably Office 2007’s .docx) format are limiting the capacity of these disks considerably. 1.4MB does not go far anymore! Finally, some drivers, software licenses, and diagnostic tools rely on floppies to run, install, or become activated.
The effort to kill off the floppy began in the early 1990s when Iomega introduced the Zip drive. Today, the crusade continues and while the battle appears to be closer to being won by the anti-floppy, the floppy disk continues to fight and probably will still be in relatively widespread use three years from now.
If you’re still using floppies on a regular basis and you indeed have the equipment to switch to something else, by all means abandon the old diskettes. They are far less reliable (especially newer disks, which are poorly made), a worse value (compare the $/megabyte ratio of a floppy and a Memory Key), and store much less than their newer cousins. Save your drives, you may need them to access old files some day, but help to put the dinosaur into the extinction bin once and for all. As much as I like floppies, their time has come and gone and the computer industry needs to move on--they are in fact no longer viable for everyday use.
Could traditional hard drives be next? Only time and the availability and reliability of flash memory will decide that...
21 Mar 2008, 4:30 pm
For me this evil format cannot die soon enough.It should have already been dead 10 years ago, and yet people are still using it for some strange reason. Don't people know there are better options out there now?
