Story about Floppy Disks

Do you remember floppy disks? No, right?

Do you even recognize the save icon in many programs like Word? Yes? Well, that's a floppy disk depicted there.

Of course, the floppy disk icon isn't printed as objects via a 3D printer; they were real products from back then. The floppy disk was one of the first storage devices for data and revolutionized the computer world by making punch cards obsolete. It was also called a "floppy disk."

I'll explain the history of the floppy disk drive and how floppy disks were circulated.

8 Inch (20.32 cm): The Beginnings

The first floppy disk drives appeared as early as 1967, but they were only readable and could only load microcodes into microcomputers; they had an initial storage capacity of only 81 KB back then. Microcodes are firmware and controls for the devices.

The floppy disks had a size of 8 inches (approx. 20 cm), meaning a diameter of 20 cm. That's quite large. The engineer Alan Shugart invented them. But it wasn't until around 1971 that they could not only be read, but also written to and formatted.

Back in 1971, computers were the size of a desk; the devices were placed under the table, leaving space for your feet. The floppy disk drives were somewhat at the back of the table, where the disks were inserted from above. Each floppy disk drive weighed 6 kilograms, and as usual, there were often two disk drives, as the first computers worked without hard drives.

The power consumption wasn't exactly low either. Every time data was read from or written to the 8-inch floppy disks, they drew 55 watts of power.

They were called Type 1 disks and had a storage size of only 237.25 KB per 8-inch disk. CP/M was the standard operating system for such microcomputers.

5.25 Inch (13.34 cm): Entry into the Home Computer Sector

Over time, the size changed and the floppy disks became smaller and handier so they could fit into home computers. At that time, the first computer for home use was introduced, such as the IBM AT-XT, and accordingly, the floppy disks were reduced to 5.25 inches (approx. 13 cm) so that they would fit into the floppy disk drives of the home computer.

The storage capacities were increased, eventually reaching 1.2 MB of storage capacity. That's enough for 50 articles with 10,000 characters each, and an approximate size of 20 KB each. Image data was very storage-intensive at the time, and book authors like the sci-fi author worked with WordStar, which was a pure text application program without images or extras.

You could only edit text, but not insert images. The texts flickered on amber-colored displays on the small monitors back then, so people comfortably worked with word processing, spreadsheets, or even programming with their home computers.

However, they were more susceptible to fingerprints on the magnetic layer, and the disks could accidentally be creased, destroying the data.

3.5 Inch (8.89 cm): "Modern" Floppy Disks

Now we have the last stage of development, which only needs a magnetic read and write head on the disks themselves. The floppy disks were further reduced to 3.5 inches (8.89 cm), they received a plastic casing and protective covers for the read head area. This was necessary because many people touched the magnetic layer and made it unusable as a result. The magnetic layer of floppy disks is very sensitive to touch, because every touch could oxidize it and leave permanent fingerprints.

Thanks to the plastic casing, the floppy disks can no longer be creased, thus the innovations ensure high data security for the disks. The simplified write-protection notches protect the data from accidental overwriting, because when the notch is pulled up, write protection is activated. Then the drives are not allowed to write anything, only read.

It is space-saving and handy, so it can easily be stored in plastic boxes for floppy disks, as they measure just over 8 cm in diameter. It became the main storage medium around the 1990s.

The drives also became smaller and are housed in a space-saving way in the computer case, because by the mid-1990s, the 5.25-inch floppy disks were no longer used. The freed-up 5.25-inch drives were used instead of CD drives.

Storage Capacity and Data Security

But floppy disks offer low storage capacity and barely have enough space for many modern things. Only text files or text-only source code could completely fit on the floppy disks, but they are extremely durable. I still have floppy disks, and the data on them has survived for more than 40 years.

However, it also ages and the sectors slowly become unusable, because the magnetism is influenced by external influences such as the Earth's magnetism and cell phone towers. The magnetism on floppy disks slowly disappears due to these influences. This can also be seen with VHS tapes, where after many decades the picture and sound are distorted.

Often you can save the data by using special floppy disk copying programs that can repeat multiple times or indefinitely when reading errors occur. Under Linux it's called e.g. ddrescue or with floppy disk copying programs on the retro computer. With multiple readings, the data on old floppy disks could still be okay and thus safely transferred to the image. With a bit of bad luck, they remain unusable or even appear as "unformatted."

I was able to save my memories from 20–30 years ago, when I worked with old computers and wrote countless text files, BASIC programs and source codes.

Old Hard Drives

It's similar for ancient hard drives, but they last much longer because the storage layer is thick enough to keep the data safe. In contrast to modern hard drives of today, they still have the magnetic coating like floppy disks, so they also have similarly low storage capacity as floppy disks.

Because the very first hard drives work with MFM modulation, which was used in the same way for floppy disks before trying to significantly increase the storage capacity with improved frequency modulations and other magnetic coatings.

My 30 MB hard drive from 40 years ago still works perfectly today and runs like it did on the first day. But it is loud, that's unfortunately the case with the old devices. Many retro computers are equipped with hard drive emulators or floppy disk emulators, so that they work with SD memory cards, the noise is gone and the retro computers remain quiet.

Around the mid-1990s, around 500 megabyte hard drives and PC games on CD-ROMs were the norm. Yes, you read that right, in megabytes, not in gigabytes or terabytes. Games often had pre-rendered 3D scenes as video files on CD-ROMs, as 3D graphics accelerators like 3dfx and Nvidia only became very well known around the end of the 1990s.

2000s: The End of an Era

Around the turn of the millennium in 2000, USB memory sticks spread rapidly and slowly began to displace increasingly old-fashioned floppy disks. The production of floppy disks was gradually discontinued. The last major manufacturers such as Sony stopped producing floppy disks in 2010. However, floppy disks are still used in niche areas such as aviation and in older machine controls.

But USB sticks don't have the same data security as floppy disks, because they can break if you write too much data to the USB stick or they are pulled out and the data suddenly becomes unreadable and therefore unusable. That's why you always have to click on "safely eject" before you pull them out.

That is not the case with floppy disks; they are considered very robust and durable. Even in niche areas such as aviation, machine control and the military, they are still used in certain applications. You should only not remove the floppy disks while the drive is reading or writing to them.

Japan and Floppy Disks

In Japan, floppy disks had to be enclosed with applications, but the obligation was abolished in 2024. Until recently, there were reportedly around 1,900 official procedures in which companies had to submit supplementary data either via floppy disk or CD-ROM.

The opposite case was probably not uncommon either. For example, a bank in Tokyo's Meguro district is said to have charged the district administration a monthly fee of €380 because the authority was still persistently delivering data on wage payments by messenger and floppy disk.

The reason for this continued use lies in a combination of cultural and bureaucratic factors. They are considered reliable and offer protection against hacker attacks because they are used in isolation from networks. It is an offline medium that made it attractive for sensitive data, that is, the floppy disks were never active, but had to be inserted into the drive to read them.

In Japan, there is respect for traditions, because the saying "never touch a running system" generally applies there. So the mentality of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Maintaining floppy disks became increasingly expensive in the long term, as the production of floppy disk drives and spare parts had long been discontinued.

"War against floppy disks won! Floppy disks are finally a thing of the past," the country of Japan is pleased to announce.

Conclusion

For about three years now, the Microsoft Windows 11 operating system has no longer searched drive A first for a new driver, which was traditionally reserved for floppy disk drives, but immediately looks on drive C.

Therefore, the drive letters A and B were reserved for floppy disk drives and you start with C for the hard drives, not with A.

Floppy disks are old-fashioned, but apart from low data capacity, they are considered robust. For the retro fanatics, it feels so great to hold the floppy disks in their hands and slide them into the drives.

If you want to hold a pack of floppy disks in your hands, you can order them here.