floppydiske

Floppydiske, often shortened to floppy disk, was a type of removable magnetic disk storage medium used in early personal computers. It was a flexible disk enclosed in a square plastic shell. The most common sizes were 8-inch, 5.25-inch, and the ubiquitous 3.5-inch. The 3.5-inch floppy disk, introduced by Sony in the early 1980s, became the standard for many years due to its durability and higher storage capacity compared to its predecessors.

Floppy disks were used to store and transport computer files, software, and operating systems. Data was read and written to the disk by a floppy disk drive, which would spin the disk and move a read/write head across its surface. The capacity of floppy disks varied significantly with size and density. Early 8-inch floppies held around 80 kilobytes, while the later 3.5-inch disks could hold 1.44 megabytes.

Despite their widespread use, floppy disks had limitations. They were relatively slow, prone to damage from magnetic fields and physical stress, and had a limited lifespan. As technology advanced and storage needs grew, floppy disks were gradually replaced by higher-capacity and more reliable media such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, USB flash drives, and cloud storage solutions. Their use has largely become obsolete.