Talk:Floppy disk/Archive 1

message: I'm thinking of refactoring & merging the "History" and "structure" sections, so "history" is subdivided into "8 inch", "5 1/4 inch", "3.5 inch". What does everyone else think? -- Tarquin 11:31 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)
I don't know where 8 inch disks originated, but for 5 1/4 inch I have heard it was originally pushed by Apple for the Apple ][ computers, and that the manufacturer of the disk drive was a company named Shugart (named after its founder?) which later became Seagate.  Somewhat later, Apple again pioneered the 3.5 inch drive for the MacIntosh (at least in the US market?)  I think creating sections based on these different standards is a good idea.
:Seagate was another co founded by same guy (Alan Shugart). I think it has now bought Shugart Assoc. It's a complex corporate and patent history. IBM sued Shugart over the floppy since it was their design. ww 17:17, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Divide history and structure sections

message: There appears to be an inconsistant use of these units in the article. There should only be one type in the article. I know the differnece between them, but most people are only familar with KB and MB. Krik 15:00, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. That said, I sure wonder how KiBs and MiBs (in principle a Good Thing) are going to fare, given the 'measurement unit conservatism' residing in people like myself. :) Totally ambivalent, I regulary find myself being slightly annoyed at people insisting on inches, feet and pounds, instead of once and for all embracing metric units. Oh well... --Wernher 23:06, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Kibs/Mibs vs KBs/MBs

message: Some of the 8-inch floppies held more data than 160K.  Xerox released a CP/M machine, the 820, which had double-sided variations, as well as "double-density" and "super-density". --Robert Merkel 10:01 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)
:Southwest Technical Products produced an 8" drive system (ca 78 or 79 and continuing into the mid 80s) which stored 1.2 MBs per disk (2 sides, double density). Several other personal computer vendors did the same. ww 17:18, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: More data on 20 cm (8 inch) disks

message: I guess we should rather standardise on a single notation for 'fractional' floppy disk sizes, i.e., either    3.5" & 5.25"    or    3½" & 5¼".     It would certainly make the article seem more encyclopedic :-)One should of course include the alternative notation as well, to signify its existence.-- Wernher 23:58, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Standarize fractional

message: How about downscaling the photo of the 3½" disk drive relative to the photo of the 5¼" drive, so that it doesn't incorrectly look like the former is of equal or bigger size than the latter? A good example to follow is the diskette photos earlier in the article.  -- Wernher 22:22, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea.  Also of course the article is begging for photos of an 8" disk and disk drive.  Perhaps a collector could take a single snapshot of all 3 disks together and all 3 drives together to indicate scale correctly.  Tempshill 05:31, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Downscaling the 9cm (3.5 inc photo)

message: :Another advance in the oxide coatings allowed for a new "extended-density" ("ED") format at 2.88MB introduced on the second generation NeXT Computers in 1991, but by the time it was available it was already too small to be a useful advance over 1.44, and never became widely used. 
Is this really the story?  IT departments worldwide throughout all of the 1990s probably would have appreciated 2.88MB floppies.  Tempshill 05:55, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that sounds correct. I remember that 2.88M floppies did exist, but no one really used them. Hard disk technology was more coming into its own then, I think? Dysprosia 05:58, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

text: The 2.88 3.5" floppies were the consequence of Fujitsu (or Toshiba, I can't remember which) discovering a way to do vertical recording on floppy membrane media. They used barium oxide as the magnetic media and required special r/w heads and electronics. IBM adopted them for some of their PC machines (probably in the ill fated patented bus they introduced for the some of the PS/2 machines) and a few others used them as well. The disks were expensive (more than 2x the cost of HD disks) and the drives were too. They were never adopted by enough folks to gain much economy of scale and so the price never dropped enough... And then there were the hard drives which were much higher capacity, very much faster, and not too much more expensive. ww 17:24, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: When 2.88 disks came out, there were already a number of different floppy-type drives and media that could store about 20 megabytes on a 3.5" disk.  None of these ideas had the critical mass to become a de facto standard until 1995, when Iomega figured out how to attach an external drive to a computer via the parallel port, and introduced their Zip disk.  Samboy 22:43, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: oxide coatings

message: I notice that Nakamats(u)'s claim to have invented the floppy disk is disputed at many internet sites. Because of this, and in order to preserve the prose flow of the article, I moved the passage about Nakamats(u) below the IBM/Shugart paras. --Wernher 18:53, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: IBM team vs Nakamats(u) as inventors

message: Someone entered an item in the trivia section saying that viewing a solar eclipse through a floppy disk (removed from its protective casing) was totally safe for avoiding eye damage. This is incorrect and might even lead people unwittingly to destroy their eyes! I therefore deleted the item. See, for instance, the following extract from (three quarters down) the page Using Safe Solar Observing Methods at the web site of Continental Capers Travel Center, Inc.:
"Filters made from sunglasses, Polaroid filters, smoked or dark glass, typical photographic neutral density filters, CDs, floppy disk media, cellophane and mylar food packaging, undeveloped film, color films, slides or negatives, X-ray films with images, and chromogenic photographic emulsions are not safe! These filters may transmit dangerous amounts of ultraviolet or infrared radiation even if the filter appears opaque. They may also have small pinholes or non-uniform coatings that can allow unsafe amounts of light through."
--Wernher 17:57, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good catch — in fact, this is such a dangerous popular myth that I decided to add it back in debunked form, with links explaining why it's a bad idea. Deco 02:23, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dangerous trivium deleted

message: Can someone provide a source/example or at least an announcement that such a format has existed or has at least been planned? I never heard of it, and Amstrads/Spectrums were limited to 360KB or less. Maybe some connection with MSX systems, which used 720 3½ floppies right from the start? EpiVictor 13:38, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: it shuold be noted that at least from 5¼ inch onwards all the drives spun at the same speed and used the same hardware interface. So it wouldn't need a 720K 3 inch standard as such just a controller that could do 720K and a drive of high enough quality to support the data rate. Plugwash 16:26, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes but have there even been 3" drives with a hardware controller similar to the 3½ one or at least capable of coping with denser tracks/higher data rate? At least the Amstrad drives were cleary 5¼ -based (down to the point of using an identical format for both 3" and 5¼ disks), but what about 3½ ??? Have there EVER been DD disks (with better magnetic medium) and capable drives? Have they even been used in some system? EpiVictor 12:44, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: At least the Amstrad PCW8512 and PCW9512 used 720 KB floppies. I have updated the Amstrad PCW entry to reflect that. Frodet 16:31, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: and there was also double density stuff for the beeb and i'm sure 3 inch floppy drives were sold as suitable for use with that. Plugwash 03:30, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Did 3" DD (720K) disks ever exist? 

message: Is there an inconsistency in the history section on 'the 5¼-inch minifloppy'? The first paragraph on Burroughs says of 1975 'to reflect the knowledge that IBM's audio recording products division was demonstrating a dictation machine using 5.25" disks.' The next paragraph has the story of the napkin as the origin of the size happening in 1976. :Hcharles 07:04, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I find the former story more credible. The latter is probably an urban legend. I have no evidence though. Deco 00:43, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of 5.25 inch Form Factor 

message: There were a variety of formats for 5.25 inch disks on the IBM PC, some of which are not reflected in this article.  Sizes/formats were:
  8 sector, 40 track, 1 side =  160 kb
  9 sector, 40 track, 1 side =  180 kb
  8 sector, 40 track, 2 side =  320 kb
  9 sector, 40 track, 2 side =  360 kb
 17 sector, 80 track, 2 side = 1200 kb
The first four were commonly called "double density"; the last was "quad density".
The format command included switches to force any of these formats (see the help screens of DOS 6.22).  However a 360 kb or less diskette formatted in a 1200 kb drive often could not be read by a 360 kb drive.  The explanation I recall was that the 1200 kb drive's tracks were physically narrower than those of a 360 kb drive, too narrow to be read accurately by the wider gap in the 360 kb drive head.  --Jm546
:yes an 80 track drive double stepped to 40 (whether by software or by a hardware 40/80 switch) can cause problems with real 40 track drives sometimes due to the narrower head. Plugwash 22:11, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  5.25 inch floppy disk capacities/formats on the IBM PC family 

message: and that is, 1,457,664 bytes!
Nothing with 1.47-something MB!
I reckon that the KiB/MiB nonsense is the greatest bullsh*t in IT history (Die IEC!), hence I will calculate in traditional units.
Let 1 MB be 1 KB x 1 KB, that is 1,048,576 bytes. 1,457,664 divided by this size gives about 1.39 MB, augmented by roughly 1/10000.
Hence in good ol' MB (1 KB squared), the size is about 1.39, not 1.47.
:You are confusing two things; Firstly, the reason you get 1,457,664 bytes is because the FAT file system has an overhead of 16,896 bytes. This totals to 1,474,560 - hence ~1.47 MB. Secondly: 1,474,560 bytes / 1,024 bytes = 1,440 KiB (or 1.40625 MiB).
::IMO the biggest problem with the IEC reccomendation is they introduced the unambiguos KiB/MiB/GiB but they decided that KB/MB/GB were fine for the decimal prefixes. This means that we still have no unambiguous way to reffer to the decimal prefix without using extra words or adding riders to our documents. Plugwash 22:10, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  My formatted 3.5" MSDOS disks have different sizes... 

message: Could someone add information on the floppy disks used by the Famicom Disk System? I don't know much about them outside what is said about them on the FDS article --Zilog Jones 18:11, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I added a new "Mistumi Quick Disk" format subsection under the 3" format subsection. They appear to be 3" or 2.5" floppies in a 3" x 4" casing, and resemble the standard 3" disks in that they're double sided, but nothing exceptional. A link to photos is available, too. EpiVictor 19:01, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  FDS "Disk Cards" 

message: How much does a 3.5" floppy disk actually weigh? --Anonymous
:According to my old letter scale, around 17 g (~ 0.6 oz).  --Wernher 12:58, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weight 

message: hey whats up everybody  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.64.103.98 (talk) 16:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is yet another MiB vs MB vs "Mega-bytes" dispute or you're saying the figure is totally wrong and there has never ever been a 5.25" format even close to 1.2 MB? Also, in what way is the table "terrible"? EpiVictor 10:01, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the table can be improved and may do it if and as I have the time.  The problem is both MiB vs MB AND formatted versus unformatted capacities.  I think the specific 5.25" FD in question would be called a DSQD FD and have 2 sides, 77 tracks/side, 15 sectors/track, 512 bytes/sector (i.e., the 8" DSDD geometry) for an exact gross formatted capacity of 1,182,720 bytes or 1.2MB.  Unformatted I believe the capacity was 1.6MB.  YE Data shipped the first such drive in 1982 and I corrected the web site.  Because in the early days, the same disk could have a variety of formated capacities, I have been slowly fixing the table to draw the distinction between the unformatted capacity which is the disk manufacturers specification and the various formatted capacities in different applications.Tom94022 21:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The 5¼" DSQD diskettes that I used (in drives such as the Teac FD-55F) were 80 track, double-sided, 9 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector, 720 Kbyte drives.  I also used 5¼" DSHD diskettes (on the PC/AT and in drives such as the Teac FD-55G) that were 80 track, double-sided, 15 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector, 1,200 Kbyte drives. AndrewBall 04:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  5.25 inch floppies 

message: I think it would be a really good idea to include some information about how long floppies last, how often they should be refreshed etc. Cached 06:45, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archival, lifetime, refreshing 

message: For a short time, Smith-Corona used a 3-inch floppy disk format which was not quite the same as the one used by Amstrad.  I don't have much information handy on this, but I do recall the disk being hard plastic, square, and with one corner "cut" diagonally like its 3½ inch cousin, but without a sliding dust cover door.  -- Todd Vierling 16:49, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  3-inch floppies in Smith-Corona word processors 

message: an article this long deserves a far longer intro. you shouldn't open an article like this and instantly get a huge TOC and spec table filling most of the visible screen area. Plugwash 03:50, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  more intro 

message: The original version of the Atari 520ST shipped with 360K single-sided 3½ floppy disks in 1985.  (It was also not uncommon to format the disks with 10 sectors instead of 9, thereby increasing the capacity to 400K.)  I don't see that configuration listed in the main table. – Doug Bell (talk/contrib) 22:26, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Another noteworthy oddity of this format is that it saved the data on the opposite side to the common single-sided IBM-compatible 3.5" type, making single sided atari and IBM discs/drives utterly incompatible (as you couldn't flip them over like you can 5.25" ones). The swiftly updated double sided versions fixed this problem. Apparently it did however make dual-format discs possible, e.g. magazine cover discs where there were a certain "main" set of programs available to all readers on "Side A", and a second set of double-sided-drive owner accessible minor programs on "Side B", accessed via a subfolder. Quite how they got this to work, I can't fathom, but probably it required some very nifty custom programming. I'd also be interested to hear anything of the 5.25" inch format that the ST could also use (the original machine not having a built-in drive, but using external drives of either 3.5 or 5.25 size plugging in through a floppy interface presumably conforming to some existing standard), which quickly died a horrible death once 3.5" was standardised by the introduction of models with internal drives. Too bad they didn't go the whole hog and include the newly-minted DSHD standard, really. 82.46.180.56 (talk) 03:28, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Atari ST had 360K 3½ disks 

message: It is weird that this featured article uses the word "wallet" in the first sentence; I have never seen this word used to describe the carrier shell. (It is hard to find a good word, since the old floppies used a thin flexible enclosure, and new ones use a thick hard shell.) 69.87.194.177 21:02, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: wouldn't a disk's skeleton be the steel hub in the center?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.110.223 (talk) 20:51, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: wallet?

message: What is with the "hello" at the beginning of this topic?  If you would like this to be removed please type "support" or if you oppose the idea of removing "hello" type "oppose".  Be sure not to erase others entrys.  Please include a breif reason for why you support or oppose the idea.
Survey
    Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with 71.65.92.121 20:56, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The "hello" you're talking about was a test edit added by an anonymous contributor 90 minutes before you reverted it. Nobody wants it there. Don't worry. Deco 00:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hello?!?! 

message: The "Background" section is hopelessly flawed. We're using formatted capacity, but formatted capacity depends on the drive being used, the encoding method being used and the filesystem being used. It depends little on the disks themselves. For example, a 1MB floppy could be:
720kB (PC)
880kB (Amiga FFS)
838kB (Amiga OFS)
800kB (Mac)
976kB (Amiga NFS)
But, all along, the actual capacity of the disk is 1MB. Wayne Hardman 18:59, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This "issue" is already hinted at in the "Ultimate capacity, speed" section, however unless we can find a reliable source saying "data density can't exceed tot bits/cm2" or something equivalent, and find what density was used for each "generation" of floppy disks, including increased densities in the same form factor. Even if sources are found, it will be very consusing speaking of "the 2 unformatted MB era" and the "1 MB unformatted MB era", when readers will probably look for familiar figures such as 1.44 MB etc. Plus, does anyone have an idea what the unformatted capacity of, say, a "360KB" 5 1/4" drive or 3" drive was supposed to be? 400 KB? 500 KB?EpiVictor 14:17, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The "reliable source" is the specified unformatted capacity from the manufacturer's data sheets for the disk drives, since in that era the net capacity was a function of the controller - typically provided by a third party.  If a system exceeded that density (whatever the bits/cm2) it would void the drive and media warranties.  Depending upon the efficiency of the controller, the same drive/disk combination would have different formatted capacities - see Section 7.1 for a discussion of some of the variations in formatted capacity from a medium.  To answer your question regarding the "360KB" 5¼ inch drive, I'd have to find the Shugart SA410 OEM manual - I suspect it would show an unformatted capacity of 512.512 kBytes (or 500.5 KiBytes) Tom94022 16:01, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why use formatted capacity 

message: Staples office supply stores now have a plastic tub at the checkout with 64 megabyte USB flash drives priced $10 or less. Cheap enough to buy as party favors for your kid's birthday party. Makes me feel old to remember that some floppy disks cost more than that for one disk! (Or that a 64M usb flash drive used to be so expensive it was kept in the back room and you had to tackle a store employee to get one for you.)
:Once again, the only thing standing between floppy disks and "death" is their role as a legacy device for last-ditch maintenance and administrative tasks such as emergency boots, Flash BIOS updates etc. 193.92.246.52 11:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thing is floppies have come down too. To the point where you can treat them like BIC pens buying them by the boxfull and not really caring where they end up. Flash sticks haven't (and may never given the physical side to them) reach that price point yet. CD-Rs are down at similar prices to floppies but you have the extra pain of buring being a seperate task (packet writing never really took off and preformatted CDs for packet writing were never really availible) that always seems to have a minimum time greater than copying a small file to a floppy. Plugwash 14:39, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, show me that shop. They seem to have been stuck at 4.99 for a box of 10 (at least in physical outlets, but online doesn't seem massively cheaper) for a long time now. CDR and USB stick are massively better value in terms of cash per megabyte. There's just one or two difficult situations for where a floppy is marginally better, so they're hanging on, at 0.49 per 1.39mb....  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.46.180.56 (talk) 05:39, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: This just may kill the floppy

message: One point about floppies was their relative low price. Up to the mid-90s 5,25"-Floppies have been the cheapest storage medium on a $ per MB scale. I know many people which used 5,25"-drive on their Macs, Amigas and Ataris troughout the 80ths and 90ths just because those media costs only a third of a 3,5"-media. Crass Spektakel 15:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope they used the 1.2 MB variety, though :-) Amstrad CPC users did use 5'25" floppies, for one because they could be formatted exactly like 3" ones and were even more cheaper (like 1/5th or even less) than 3" disks, but Amiga and Atari ST...could high density 5,25" be formatted exactly like Amiga or Atari ST disks? Or was it merely used in its standard 1.2 MB format for generic data storage? EpiVictor 17:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Pricing

message: While there was never a direct followup to the floppy one can say that between 1995 and 2005 the CDR/CDRW/DVDR/DVDRW mostly replaced it. Nowadays it seems like USB-storage-systems are going to replace all earlier media, no matter what exactly is connected to USB, be it a magnetic Harddisk, Flash-Memory or optical CD/DVD-drives. Crass Spektakel 15:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There were (and are) some people who waste a whole CD-ROM just to burn 1-2 MB worth of files and don't even use multisession, but there really was no widespread rewriteable medium until 2002-2003, when USB and flash storage really became affordable and supported. As for USB based media...maybe Flash or some other solid state media, but not necessarily with an USB connection. Think about how faster an internal SATA connection is compared to USB 2.0 .... EpiVictor 17:18, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Zip sort-of held the fort for a while ... typically I found that if I wasn't able to use a CDR drive for getting large files off a friend's or an institutional computer, then a Zip was available. And of course, the parallel ones were portable, so long as you could sneak in the drive, it's PSU wall-wart, and the standalone (no-install, about 50kb) driver on a floppy.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.46.180.56 (talk) 05:37, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: heritage

message: I have nominated Floppy disk for a featured article review because I am concerned it may not meet the requirements of a featured article. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Gzkn 07:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  FAR 

message: The Origins section includes this statement: The IBM standard soft-sectored disk format was designed to hold just as much data as one box of punch cards. The disk was divided into 77 tracks of 26 sectors, each holding 128 bytes. Note that 77×26 = 2002 sectors, whereas a box of punch cards held 2000 cards.
The implication is that a punched card = 128 bytes. I believe the most common IBM punched cards are 80 bytes. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jmsofia (talk • contribs) 21:59, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparison to punched card storage capacity 

message: I'm 99.99% certain that the claim about 12-inch floppies being used on mainframes is incorrect.  Perhaps someone just has a poor memory.  IBM invented the 8-inch floppy for use on mainframes, and it was used that way for a long time.  They didn't get larger, but IBM did use "magazines" holding multiple 8-inch diskettes on some computers (e.g., System/38, and probably others).  If no one provides a citation soon, I'm deleting the 12-inch claim.  --Brouhaha 03:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As noted further below on this page (duplicate questions!), I'm SURE I've seen a photo. GIS time?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.46.180.56 (talk) 05:35, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  No 12-inch floppies 

message: It might be worth mentioning is that the earliest 8-inch floppies had their index hole near the edge of the disk rather than the location near the spindle that became industry standard.  I don't know the full history, but possibly IBM changed the index hole location to distinguish the early read-only disks (used for microcode load, and only written at the factory) from the later read-write disks.  There were at least some non-IBM products that used the index-near-edge floppies, as I have in my posession a box of blank floppies of that type made by another vendor.  --Brouhaha 03:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Early 8-inch floppies 

message: This explains the different numbering labels, while here we generically call the Mitsumi Quick Disk a 3-inch format.
What?
141.199.248.2 18:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who is 'we' 

message: Any information on how to retrieve data from that IBM marketing failure of mid 1990's would be appreciated. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 41.241.149.225 (talk) 21:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A 2.88 MB drive or even a 1.44 MB drive coupled with software like 22Disk, Anadisk or the Catweasel floppy disk controller may prove flexible enough. EpiVictor 17:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  IBM Thinkpad and 2 MB floppies 

message: The link to a company called Computer Concepts in the Acorn Archimedes section is not the right Computer Concepts. The Computer Concepts in question is now called Xara (www.xara.com).KerrySwatridge 12:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Computer Concepts 

message: In trivia section it is stated that it is dangerous to use a floppy as solar filter. On contrary, in its reference [45] floppy is rated as "marginally safe", so calling it "urban myth", and warnings of retina burn and blindness seems to be exaggerated to me. --Pannonius 14:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Floppy as solar filter 

message: I took the bold step to remove floppy disks from "obsolete storage media" and add them to the "legacy hardware" category, which IMHO better suits the actual situation. Floppy disks, at least some of their formats, are not yet "obsolete" and are surely not "obsolete" like e.g. C64 data cassette tapes, but are more like a "legacy device", which needs to be supported because there's no real substitute in certain cases: (try installing Windows XP without a specific SATA driver on certain configurations). EpiVictor 11:26, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Which one signifies stuff that's hopelessly out of date and almost never ever used, and which one stuff that's definitely a bit past it, but still ostensibly in current use in some everyday environments and on sale in some major stores? It should probably live in whatever place audio compact cassette resides, as it has about the same status (ie people still have car tape players and libraries still hold language courses on tape, shops sell blanks and a small contingent of hi-fis that have decks, just as some new computers STILL have 3.5" drives ... but no music gets sold on tape and not many people have a cassette walkman --- even though it's not exactly a format of great currency any more, it's still hanging on) 82.46.180.56 (talk) 05:34, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Legacy, not obsolete 

message: We need to do some SERIOUS pruning here. The various failed 5.25 replacements need to be taken down to point form, and the large inclusions here either removed or moved into their own articles. There are also several other mentions of one-off formats (like the IBM 4") that need to be moved out of there as well. This is not something that should be in the mainline article! Maury 20:25, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes; Wikipedia itself thinks the article is too long as a single item.  See Floppy disk format for a first stab at separating out some of the information.  It's still overlapping a bit, and not linked from here; it probably should subsume the formatting-related information in this article.  Todd Vierling 19:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wow, this article is stinky 

message: The article does not mention anything about the ribbon cable (with curious inverted sections) that the FDD uses, or the interface or bus that runs on it. What bandwidth does it support? Apart from that, the article is very comprehensive (if a bit long - see above)--ChrisJMoor 19:22, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion: Add information about the interface the FDD uses 

message: This page mentions the 2-inch floppy disks being used in a camera, but it doesn't mention that the 3½-inch disk was used in digital still cameras in the 90s. Sort of like a memory card, except it was a massive floppy disk and slotted straight into the camera to hold 1.4Mb of photos. Heck, it would even be impressive if someone could take a photo of one of these cameras with a floppy half inserted JayKeaton 17:21, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, Sony's Mavica (the later line of Mavica cameras released in the late 90's onward, not the original 1981 Mavica that recorded analog still video frames on the aforementioned 2-inch disks) cameras are the ones you are talking about.  They used a standard 3.5" floppy to save images onto, and were readable by a PC, which made transferring images from one of these cameras to a floppy drive-equipped PC quite simple.  I have one of these cameras (a Sony MVC-FD91), and I could make an image of it with a floppy partially inserted into it, like you mentioned... misternuvistor 04:08, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be truly awesome. This sort of technology really shows what the floppy disks were capable of and certainly it is a great example of how integrated these disks were in society, rather than just for transferring and storing documents and small files. Plus the picture will look great in this article JayKeaton 16:36, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A few months ago I left a job in a school where they still used one of these for any uncritical pictures they had to take (e.g. stuff that would be printed small in a project, introducing kids to digicams, etc - it wasn't super high quality). Reasoning was along several lines such as, a) its already paid for!, b) each kid can very cheaply get their own set of hard-to-lose easy-to-label memory cards (seriously, f*** microSD, why do I want a memory card I CAN SNORT?), c) it's basically unstealable by this point ... in fact it was left somewhere as bait to try and catch an employee suspected of stealing and they - nor anyone else passing through - never bothered to touch it (as regards taking pics with the disc "half out"? No, it's fully inserted in the style of a minidisc or mini-VHS tape.... this bugger is thin but it has a larger cross-section than a medium-format SLR!). Just as I was working out my notice they got a new hard-disc based video camera which also took digital photos (oddly, of about the same quality). It'd be interesting to see which one gets broken / breaks down / is stolen / thrown away first... Somehow I think the Mavica will soldier on regardless when the HDD one is long gone! 82.46.180.56 (talk) 05:28, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Actually the Sony TRV-900 Digital Video camera that I purchased in 1999 also came with an attachable 3.5" floppy disk drive (via a PCM-CIA card), that I could use to store still images. It was a rather awkward setup, and since I never used it and it also worked perfectly well in a laptop's expansion slot, I ended up giving it away.--64.229.25.36 11:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use in digital camera 

message: I think that the Floppy Disk Drive should have its own part, so as to remove confusion. Ah2190 12:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seperate? 

message: Regardless of what happens with the SI prefixes vs "traditional" prefixes debate, lowercased "kB" always means 1000 bytes.  If you mean 1024 bytes, use either the traditional capital KB or official standard KiB.
To reiterate, if a disk has 360 × 1024 bytes, write it as "360 KB" or "360 KiB", but not "360 kB".  This is wrong, and everyone in the debate will support me on this. 
If you actually mean kB = 1000 bytes, on the other hand... good luck, I guess.  :-) — Omegatron 01:07, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you do a Google search on kB memory you will get numerous serious hits such as   , including stores selling such, where k is being used as 1,024. I agree it shouldn't be so but I am afraid it is :-( Tom94022 04:23, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed it shouldn't be so. And since WP is an encyclopedia, we should strive to clarify such things, i.e. use the correct form and inform about the other (incorrect) ones. IIRC, some of the most ardent "sinners" against the correct usage of KB and MB have been the hard/floppy disk manufacturers, which commonly have been using kB and MB with the 1000-factor, to "prop up" their products' capacities. Often, a disk manufacturer's "MB" equals 1000x1000 bytes, a 5% difference from the correct number. --Wernher 18:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The evidence suggests that M = 106 was and is the correct way to measure secondary storage and that the use of M = 220 is a consequence of lazy and/or incompetent system utility programmers, most likely starting with the Macintosh OS.   Same point with regard to k and its incorrect variant K (unfortunately, many persons use k and K interchangeably to represent 103). Disk manufacturer's have consistently used decimal digits and SI prefixes since long before the corrupt binary usage of SI prefixes began.  This conversation belongs on the Binary Prefix talk page and not in this talk page.  Tom94022 22:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I was going to point out what Tom did.  Oddly enough, this usage of the lower-case 'k' to denote 210 seems to be a confused attempt at more accurate representation of the unit prefix (in my anecdotal experience, someone will realize that there is no SI prefix 'K' and will adjust to using 'kB' accordingly). -- mattb 23:05, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't have any counter evidence, but K and M have always referred to 2^10 and 2^20 in every computing context, save storage manufacturers, that I've ever encountered. If I met a sysadmin who used an M suffix and meant 10^6, I'd question its qualifications. --Yath 23:09, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Look above on this very page and on the binary prefixes page and you'll find plenty of evidence to the contrary.  While K and M certainly commonly mean 210 and 220, there are many notable exceptions, both historical and contemporary.  This issue is frequently muddied by recentism, but there is good reason to believe that early usage of SI prefixes in byte capacity contexts did indeed intend the SI definitions of said prefixes (specifically 'k').  -- mattb 23:14, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  My Commodore 64 (and Atari 400 and Apple II and most late 70s/early 80s PCs) certainly did not interpret "kilo" as 1000.  64 kilobytes of RAM meant 64*1024 = 65525 bytes.  And 170 kilobytes of 5 1/4" disc meant 170*1024 = 174080 bytes.   It was ALL measured in Base 2.  Never base 10.  -  Theaveng 23:20, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually I think you will find the same consistency with floppy disk drive manufacturers (all of the early ones were also HDD manufacturers).  Keep in mind that FDD's have "dumb" interfaces so that the user capacity of a FD is a function of the controller.  Until controllers became semiconductors, e.g., Intel 8271 circa 1977, there were a variety of different end user formats offered, e.g. Apple and the IWM.  The drive manufacturers tended to specify the unformatted capacity in decimal bits and megabits or decimal bytes and megabytes.  For 8" drives it was common to also state a "typical" formatted capacity, referencing the several IBM standards (SSSD, DSSD and DSDD).  Each controller and/or system manufacturer then stated its formated capacities in its own peculiar way - the majors seem to be pretty clean at least until the 3.5" FDD era.  Again no evidence of "floppy drive size inflation" by the drive manufacturers.  Whether confusion, if any, was inflation, incompetence, laziness or combinations thereof on the part of system and/or controller manufacturers remains to be established. And who gave us the 1.44 MB FDD is a real mystery (BTW to a drive manufacturer it is 2.0*106 Bytes unformatted).  Tom94022 06:03, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  My Commodore 64 (and Atari 400 and Apple II and most late 70s/early 80s PCs) certainly did not interpret "kilo" as 1000.  64 kilobytes of RAM meant 64*1024 = 65525 bytes.  And 170 kilobytes of 5 1/4" disc meant 170*1024 = 174080 bytes.   It was ALL measured in Base 2.  Never base 10.  
Which makes sense to me.  Anything that is connected to a computer, whether it's memory or a disc or a USB flash or whatever, should be measured using Base 2 binary, because that's how the computer "thinks" and measures things.  Computers never used Base 10 and neither should the things attached to it.  -  Theaveng 23:20, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Then start measuring using Base 2 binary if you want to. Me, I think, 720 KByte is a bit more handy than 1'011'010'000 kByte. There is no problem using Base 2 for memory. It is just no good idea using allready occupied terms for that. By the way, my modem and network interface cards are connected to my computer, transmiting data dependend to a frequency measured in decimal Hz. For that reason, 100BaseT means 100 000 000 Bit/s when it says 100 MBit/s.--213.183.10.41 18:44, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good argument.  I'm going to have to change my mind, and I agree that Base 10 makes more sense.  It's easier to convert from one unit to another if you just move the decimal left or right.  -  Theaveng 14:58, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lowercase k always means 1000 

message: On the release date for 2.88 MB drive, there seems to be a contradiction between this article and the IBM PC article.  It is 1988 versus 1991. 68.113.47.82 03:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I suspect the IBM PC article is incorrect since it says it was an "instant failure" which is blatantly wrong (the format lasted several years before IBM finally gave-up on the idea).  That sentence from the IBM PC article is likely just some person's hazy memory w/o any kind of research done.  -  Theaveng 21:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  2.88 MB Intro Date? 

message: Does anyone have any data on the total number of disks ever manufactured? Or data on annual production rates over the years?  This was the primary mode for portable transportation of zeroes and ones for many years! I imagine there are BILLIONS of these things in landfills around the world.  If anyone has any links to any estimates, I'd be very grateful.  Thanks,  --Beagley 18:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:   Well, I personally own 1000 (accumulated 10 or 100 at a time, over the last 20 years), and if that's the average for every computer user, and there are 1 billion users in the USA, Europe, and Asia, then figure 1 trillion discs.  -  Theaveng 21:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Any estimates on total number of disks produced, annual production? 

message: And I say "marketers" because no engineer would be stupid enough to combine Base 2 with Base 10.  Anyway, I rewrote the paragraph so it will be easy-to-understand, even for people who are not technical.  (I hope.)    
".....11,474,560 bytes or 1.47 million bytes (1.47 Megabytes). In the Base 2 binary prefix numbering system used by computers, 1,474,560 bytes is exactly 1440 kibibytes (1.4 Mebibytes).   ----------  However, neither of these numbers is generally used. The number most frequently printed on such floppies is "1.44 MB" which incorrectly combines Base 2 (1440 kibibytes) with Base 10 (1.44 kilo-kibibytes).  Thus the label "1.44 MB" is not correct usage of the SI terminology and leads to confusion for users.     ----------  A person expecting the "1.44 MB" number to be stated in either the binary or the decimal prefix would miscalculate the number of floppies needed.  The term 1.44 MB implies that the floppy holds 1,440,000 bytes of data, which is false.  Likewise the term 1.44 MiB implies the floppy holds 1.44*1024*1024 == 1,509,949 bytes, which is also false.  (The only proper way to interpret the erroneous "1.44 MB" label is as 1.44 kilo-kibibytes which yields 1.44*1000*1024 == 1,474,560 bytes.)"  
I know that's not perfect, but then neither was the frakkin' idiot who combined Base 2 (1024) and Base 10 (1000) numbers to create nonsense numbers like 1.44 MB (1.44 million bytes) which is erroneous.    -  Theaveng 22:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  1.44 kilo-Kibibytes - what a mess the marketers created 

message: From personal experience I am fairly familiar with IBM's disk drive products, flexible and rigid, and cannot recall IBM ever having a 12" FDD.  Nor do any of my colleagues, many ex-IBM, have any such recollection.  Absent a citation, I have marked this section disputed. Tom94022 05:20, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Though I have no idea on the manufacturer or even the detailed setting, I swear blind I've seen a picture of some data-entry secretary sitting at a terminal, in the process of selecting one enormous, LP-sized square floppy from a stack of them to one side of the desk, and it was captioned as such. Possibly a bespoke system used for nuclear powerplant control if my vague and fragmented shards of memory serve. Definitely not a case of 8" ones suffering mistaken identity - from a brief stint working with crufty old medical imaging equipment, I've worked with and even spirited away a blank one of those as a souvenir... If I/the captioner were wrong, it would be, naturally enough, roughly the same as mistaking a 45rpm single for a long-playing vinyl album. 82.46.180.56 (talk) 04:05, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  IBM 12 inch FDDs 

message: I recall an ad for a 10x 3.5" floppy drive in ads. It used in part: 1.5MB DRAM cache ram, two seprate heads, and faster motors to read and write the floppy 10X faster than normal. The only reference I have is an old newsgroup article from 1996 listing Corporate Systems Center (CSC), corpsys.com, "X-10 Fastcache Floppy". 
A separate article on this could be justified if someone has more info on this 'one off'. It was not a LS-120 or any other type of combo device.  
http://www.ddj.com/184410009 Nov 1996 Dr. Dobb's article about it. (At the end.)
:Sounds like a combination of a RAM disk and a floppy. 1.5 MB of DRAM in 1996....means it was probably awfully expensive. Interestingly enough, the product must have been released at a certain point. The company CSC still exists, and even provides drivers  for the X10! There is also a certain Sr. Engineer Igor Lokhmotov that states on his resume  to have worked for CSC, designing an "Embedded X10 Fast Cache Floppy PC ISA Controller". The CV itself contains some data about the X10 itself. The X10 drivers themselves can be found in . There are MS-DOS and NT drivers, but a warning says they won't work in XP/2000. EpiVictor 14:35, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  X-10 Fastcache Floppy / 3.5" 10X floppy drive / Accelerated floppy drive 

message: I stumbled over a webpage talking about a 3.25" floppy disk, but can't find it anymore.  Yes, three and a quarter.  The disk is essentially a shrunken 5.25".  The disk is laid in a CD-like drawer and slid into the drive as a unit.  Frotz 02:21, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You maybe thinking of the Tabor Model TC500 3.25-inch floppy disk drive.  Announced in late 1982 with an unformatted capacity of 500KB on a single side.  Dysan supported the media.  It was a market failure.  I did a reasonable google search for the page u can't find and was not successful; if u ever find it again, please put a link at least here.  Tom94022 17:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's a link to the page: .  The photo of a 3.25" disk I added to the article came from Chuck Guzis.  Frotz (talk) 03:31, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  3.25 inch floppy? 

message: I'm marking the statement about the ANSI 8" standard as dubious, since to the best of my knowledge it happened in 1979 long after the market had standardized on the IBM SSSD, DSDD and DSDD formats.  All ANSI did is after the fact document the de facto standard and as such contributed little to the growth of the market; by 1979 the 8" was a declining product family rapidly being replaced by 5.25" products.  Tom94022 19:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  ANSI 8 Inch Standard Relevance