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OPINION: Mourning the floppy disk

OPINION: Mourning the floppy disk

By:  Dave Webb  On: 28 Apr 2010 For: ComputerWorld Canada Creator

The last manufacturer of the storage medium announces it will cease production. We bid a fond, tearful farewell

We mourn the passing of the floppy disk. Sony Corp., the last major manufacturer of the storage media, announced it will cease production this year.

(For reasons unclear even to me, I bought four boxes of 25 floppies just before the holidays last year, perhaps hoping to corner the post-floppy market.)

Born to IBM in 1971 at eight inches across, weighing 79.7 KB, the floppy enjoyed a long reign as portable data medium of choice. Over the years, it slimmed down, first to 5.25 inches, then to 3.5 inches, the eventual standard, holding 1.44 MB of data.

Even though it failed to keep pace with other storage technologies, the floppy disk continued to play a vital role in the enterprise. Without it, valuable technologies such as Sneakernet would never have been possible.

The floppy disk passed away from competitive complications of Moore’s Law: increased hard drive density, cheaper optical media equipment, improved solid state storage and improvements in USB technology.

The floppy disk was only 39 when it was discontinued. 

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Tags: floppy disk, technologies, Usb technology, storage, Sneakernet
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Dave Webb Dave Webb Dave Webb is a journalist of 20 years experience in newspapers and magazines. He has followed technology exclusively since 1998 and was the winner of the Andersen Consulting Award for Excell... more

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