Storage Space of the ’90s: What Happened to the Floppy Disk?

Floppy Disks: Storage disks that were the best friend of millennials but were considered a museum piece by later generations. Regardless of the year you were born, you have to get to know it. The technological revolution caused by floppy disks worldwide.

Would you like to better understand how floppy disks work and who still uses one of the technologies that left their mark on the 90s? Read on to find out all the fun facts about it!

What is a floppy disk?

Floppy, English floppy disk is a boot disk created to store and move files. The famous rectangular plastic cover protects the magnetic disk allowing this cutting-edge technology to work.

Released on January 22, 1971, the floppy disk shook the world. Like? Increasing data transfer capacity between different computers. Until then, punch card was used for this function, but it was very limited: up to 80 characters.

The peak of the floppy’s popularity was in the 1990s, and more than 5 billion copies were sold. You can see why in today’s programs it has become the icon representing the “save” action!

After all, how does a floppy disk work?

Floppy disk stores files by magnetism. The plastic disk inside is covered with a ferromagnetic material that, when magnetized on a drive, holds this data until it is deleted.

In the history of floppy disk we know this tool in different colors, sizes and storage capacities.

The first version was an 8-inch floppy disk with a capacity of 80 KB, which was later increased by 1.2 MB. The 5 ¼-format element was the next element in the evolution scale, offering capacities from 110 KB to 1.2 MB.

The most popular model was the 3.5-inch floppy. The launch of SuperDisk even offered 240 MB of stored data, and the company’s Zip Drive version had 750 MB of space.

Despite progress in producing this tool, 11,378 floppy disks are required to achieve the performance of a 16GB USB stick.

Why did the disk run out?

Floppy disks, whose production was stopped on a large scale at the beginning of the 2000s, gradually gave way to more robust, secure and practical storage tools such as CDs, memory cards, pen drives, external HD and cloud storage.

Its main weakness is the influence of external magnetic fields. Once demagnetized, the floppy disks stopped working, which caused the loss of stored information and a lot of headaches for the user.

In addition, the durability of the floppy disk is affected by the influence of cold and heat in the storage location. Shelf life was an average of five years.

But believe it or not, Floppy disks are still used by major international organizations.. Find out more by reading the FAQs we’ve collected below:

1 – A floppy disk was used in the first ransomware attack in history

On behalf of the PC Cyborg Corporation, Joseph Popp sent more than 20,000 diskettes to attendees at the World Health Organization’s world conference on HIV in 1989. The copies contained a Trojan horse, not AIDS information as promised.

2 – Airplanes use floppy for system updates

Boeing 747 and Airbus A320 aircraft still use 3.5-inch floppy disks to apply new data to the system and prevent intrusion ports.

Generally, files stored on floppy disks are new weather maps and manufacturer updates for computers controlling flights.

3 – US Department of Defense used floppy until 2020

US defense bodies such as the Pentagon used this data storage tool to manage the activities of the country’s nuclear forces until October 2020.

The reason for upgrading the system is the cost of repairs and the difficulty of finding spare parts.

4 – Floppy disks stored files from digital cameras in the 90s

The first digital camera models to use floppy disks to store their recordings were the Sony Mavica FD5 and Mavica FD7 in 1997.

Want to learn more about the history of floppy disks? Watch the video we prepared for you!

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