The days of the 3.5-inch floppy disk are now officially numbered.
Sony, which boasts 70 percent of the anemic market, announced Friday that it would end Japanese sales of the ancient storage medium in March 2011, according to a report in the Mainichi Daily newspaper.
The 3.5-inch floppy was a ubiquitous and necessary component for storing and transferring files between personal computers for nearly three decades. Sony pioneered the 3.5-inch floppy disk in 1981, eventually replacing the 5.25-inch floppy disk that had previously been the popular storage format.
However, as the size of files and programs grew, the floppy disk was pushed aside by inexpensive and larger-format storage medium. Thanks to the creation of storage methods such as CDs, DVDs, Zip, and USB drives, Sony saw its Japanese sales of floppies decline from a record 47 million disks in fiscal 2002 to 12 million in fiscal 2009.
Most other floppy disk manufacturers had long since pulled out of the market, and Sony itself has already ceased sales to most of its overseas markets.
Certainly the writing had been on the walls for years. With the release of the iMac in 1998, Apple was the first computer maker to take the plunge and eliminate the floppy completely. Dell followed suit in 2003 when it dropped the floppy as standard equipment on one of its Dimension desktops.
The first Floppy disc drive was released in 1981... I'm born in 1980... almost every computer I've ever owned had a Floppy Disc Drive... now, it's gone forever. I feel old.
Goodbye, old friend.
04-26-2010, 09:02 AM
playgen
Quote:
Sony saw its Japanese sales of floppies decline from a record 47 million disks in fiscal 2002 to 12 million in fiscal 2009
What!? who is buying and using all these. And surely if you sell 12 million of something last year, its still worth making?
04-26-2010, 09:07 AM
Melf
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
The first Floppy disc drive was released in 1981... I'm born in 1980... almost every computer I've ever owned had a Floppy Disc Drive... now, it's gone forever. I feel old
The 3.5 was released in '81. Be thankful you never had to use the original ones. Those were horrible, especially for computer gaming.
04-26-2010, 09:17 AM
Phantar
Quote:
Originally Posted by Melf
The 3.5 was released in '81. Be thankful you never had to use the original ones. Those were horrible, especially for computer gaming.
Who says I hadn't? Grew up owning a C64, which only utilized datasette- and 5,25'' floppy drives. And the first PC I owned (a 386DX) had both a 5.25'' and a 3.5'' drive... which was particularly handy when one day, for some reason, the MBR of the hard-drive broke down... instead of buying a new harddisk, we just decided to permanently shut a bootdisk into the rarely used 5.25''-drive in order to boot the system. Worked like a charm.
But you're correct if you're referring to the huge 8''-Floppies...
Ah the humble 3.5 floppy disk. It must be nearly 10 years since I actually owned one. :rip:
04-26-2010, 10:01 AM
Melf
I remember when I had to cart around a case of the damn things in college. One for each class! LOL.
04-26-2010, 10:13 AM
MrMatthews
...
You mean the floppy was still alive as recently as 2009?
To be honest, I would have been astounded if you'd told me it was still a viable media even in 2002.
04-26-2010, 10:14 AM
Mr Smith
Did you have one of those massive plastic floppy cases? My friend used to have one of those for his old games, I can't imagine how awkward it was to lug one of those things!!
A Disk as big as a Netbook-Screen. But great to fan yourself some air when the weather was hot ;)
04-26-2010, 10:36 AM
Gogogadget
Hah. I still have a rather large collection of these, for my wonderful Amiga.
I was born in 1991 and I already feel old -_-
04-26-2010, 11:58 AM
MarbleMagic
I still got piles and piles of the old 5.25" ones for my C64 lying around. They still work. The 3.5" ones usually "die", then I throw them away. I've only a small box left now.
Anybody remember Zip-Disks? Have those too, and still use them :D
04-26-2010, 11:59 AM
Speedle
pretty much all our dell poweredge servers have floppy drives in my works datacentre and we still use floppys all the time for recoverys and ghosting... poor floppys :(
A Disk as big as a Netbook-Screen. But great to fan yourself some air when the weather was hot ;)
It's one of them new square records.
04-26-2010, 12:20 PM
Nunzio
I still used 5.25" floppies in the early '90s... sad to see them go. I remember pulling the disks to some games after a death before the computer could write that you died. Good times.
04-26-2010, 12:30 PM
Knuckle Duster
THIS IS AN OUTRAGEOUS FORCED UPGRADE! WAKE UP SHEEPLE! :p
04-26-2010, 01:14 PM
Why-Disciple
I thought they stopped making them two years ago? Or was that just in America?
In any case, I don't think we should be sad, because, I mean, who's still gonna use them? It's not like they're Genesis carts being discontinued or anything.
04-26-2010, 02:07 PM
Chilly Willy
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
The first Floppy disc drive was released in 1981... I'm born in 1980... almost every computer I've ever owned had a Floppy Disc Drive... now, it's gone forever. I feel old.
You think YOU feel, old - the first computer I bought used a CASSETTE for storage!
The first Floppy disc drive was released in 1981... I'm born in 1980... almost every computer I've ever owned had a Floppy Disc Drive... now, it's gone forever. I feel old.
Goodbye, old friend.
I do indeed remember the Floppy Disc, i had no clue though that Sony was selling them, although I won't miss floppies of any sort since USB Drives are a lot more reliable and can hold a lot more too.
04-26-2010, 04:11 PM
MarbleMagic
Quote:
since USB Drives are a lot more reliable and can hold a lot more too
But they don't make ANY noise at all! :shock:
My Amiga can play El Condor Pasa on it's disk drive.
04-26-2010, 04:14 PM
Rusty Venture
I still have a box, but that is for the floppy drive I have on my Win98 machine.
But since I added flash drive drivers, the floppy still doesn't get used.
When I took AutoCAD back in 2006 we still had older computers with floppy & zip drives. Not that we were required to use them, but it didn't hurt to triple back up my work (Floppy/Zip/Flash).
When I got around to Solidworks (2008), flash drive only.
04-26-2010, 04:38 PM
bohokii
i am a commodore 64 enthusiast and still use 5.25 disks
i have a stack of boxes to the ceiling
each side holds about 170k
still use zip disks all mine are 100mb never bought any 250mb ones
cds are just so cheap and easy to burn
i have a 5.25 floppy drive in one of my old pc just in case i need it
You mean the floppy was still alive as recently as 2009?
To be honest, I would have been astounded if you'd told me it was still a viable media even in 2002.
I was actually using floppies all over the place in high school. In fact, I had one teacher recently (2008?) in college that required everything be turned in on a CD-R or (preferably) a 3.5" floppy. When you're just dealing with word files, it's not that big of a deal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarbleMagic
Anybody remember Zip-Disks? Have those too, and still use them :D
From what I understand, they died off due to CD-Rs and CD-RWs being cheaper and having a higher capacity in addition to the zip disks having high failure rates.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chilly Willy
You think YOU feel, old - the first computer I bought used a CASSETTE for storage!
I always wanted to know what would boot if I played a cassette of "Slow Ride" by Foghat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rusty Venture
When I got around to Solidworks (2008), flash drive only.
I have to say, though, Solidworks files are pretty compact for what they are. The backup drives at work have hardly any space taken up on them even though it's thousands of files.
04-26-2010, 05:19 PM
MarbleMagic
Quote:
i am a commodore 64 enthusiast and still use 5.25 disks
:notworthy:
04-26-2010, 06:22 PM
Phantar
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chilly Willy
You think YOU feel, old - the first computer I bought used a CASSETTE for storage!
Me to, actually... still got my old C64 around, including its dedicated tape recorder (The Datasette 1530). Last time I checked, it still worked, too.
04-26-2010, 06:39 PM
Mr. Ksoft
I have a feeling the floppy disk will not entirely die. There's going to be a niche market for manufacturing them. A lot of old equipment, for instance in a scientific setting, still needs them and you can't just get up and replace that stuff.
Regardless, I should stock up. I have many older computers that need them, and in another example, I'm getting a Macintosh IIci soon and it has nothing but a disk drive-- and the System 7.5 installer is something like 19 disks. I usually buy big boxes of them when I find them at garage sales, but that isn't quite often enough for me to feel like I have plenty of disks to last. (Even more annoying, is that they never come with labels. And they're black disks a lot of the time... the silver sharpie has become my friend, but that means any label is permanent)
04-26-2010, 10:30 PM
Zork
I still use Floppy Disks all the time, my digital camera uses them, and they are perfect size for putting freedos, a C64 emulator, and IK+ on them. I use that combo at school a lot.
04-26-2010, 10:37 PM
QuickSciFi
This reminds me. I saw an external floppy drive (USB port) for $3 at Goodwill the other day. It would've been nice to have one. I passed it up and now I'm home and I'm browsing through my old floppies. Good times. I remember back in 97 using these with AutoCad, I can't believe a whole file would fit in it.
04-27-2010, 03:57 AM
Rusty Venture
Quote:
Originally Posted by 17daysolderthannes
I have to say, though, Solidworks files are pretty compact for what they are. The backup drives at work have hardly any space taken up on them even though it's thousands of files.
I'm pretty sure the final projects I did were *way* too much for floppies.
I rendered, to the best of my ability and time constraint, a full size steam train. I was proud I was able to mate multiple assemblies together without errors or breaking.
Not bad for only using the program for two semesters. ;)
Ahh, the times when you could still fit an entire operating system plus a bunch of applications on a single floppy.
04-27-2010, 06:26 AM
Rusty Venture
My dad has a USB floppy for his laptop, but I'm pretty sure he hasn't used it for 2-3 years.
I remember when AOL would send out countless floppies in the mail. Mostly worth it just for the free floppy AOL sent. Reformat and use as you please.
The later CD's made great drink coasters. ;)
04-27-2010, 07:34 PM
Elusive
So, add floppies to the list of Stuff Future Generations Won't Understand:
56k modem dialout sound
Press the button on your monitor: thunk.............. *click*
3 1/4" 'floppy' disks
'dot-com industry' ahahaha
Good riddance, though. I can't imagine how many floppies must be sitting pristinely underground in landfills right now. Sorry, future dudes; looks like our crudely-compressed porn archives and '100000 TRUETYPE FONTS' collections from 1996 are your problem now :I
04-28-2010, 03:06 PM
Diosoth
They were a necessity back when I used Windows 95. However, my old Windows XP computer came with some cheapy floppy drive which worked 10% of the time and it had a CD burner anyway. My current Win7 PC didn't even have a floppy drive installed, but by now I'm burning DVDs and use frequent USB storage options. I rarely even see the discs for sale, haven't for some years. I suppose when 4 GB storage devices are at the dollar stores, storage mediums have moved on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elusive
So, add floppies to the list of Stuff Future Generations Won't Understand:
56k modem dialout sound
Press the button on your monitor: thunk.............. *click*
3 1/4" 'floppy' disks
'dot-com industry' ahahaha
Don't forget PC monitors as large as a TV set. Flat panel LCDs are now the common monitor type.
04-28-2010, 04:02 PM
Elliotw2
Hmm, I better stock up, in case some of my older computers need a recovery or a way to boot from USB/CD. Or I could just get rid of them, but what's the fun in that?
04-28-2010, 04:13 PM
Iron Lizard
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rusty Venture
My dad has a USB floppy for his laptop, but I'm pretty sure he hasn't used it for 2-3 years.
I remember when AOL would send out countless floppies in the mail. Mostly worth it just for the free floppy AOL sent. Reformat and use as you please.
The later CD's made great drink coasters. ;)
We used to chuck AOl cds from moving cars at innocent people. AOL!!!!
04-28-2010, 05:41 PM
Phantar
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iron Lizard
We used to chuck AOl cds from moving cars at innocent people. AOL!!!!
We used to take turns chucking AOL-CDs against the wall until they eventually broke. The one who managed to destroy the most was declared the winner, the others had to clean up the shards ;) These babies can take a lot of abuse I can tell you.
Ahh, Civilian Service Days... :p
04-29-2010, 04:03 AM
Rusty Venture
I don't miss AOL.
04-29-2010, 04:55 AM
kool kitty89
Quote:
Originally Posted by Melf
The 3.5 was released in '81. Be thankful you never had to use the original ones. Those were horrible, especially for computer gaming.
We were still using a mix of the 2 into the mid 90s (actually I had a combination 5.25+3.5" floppy drive in my XP machine -though the drivers didn't work right -it stayed there as there was no better place to store it ;))
What's so bad about 5 1/4" disks though? (other than the lesser durability) If you're talking about contemporaries, a 5 1/4" quad density disk held as much as a double density 3 1/2" disk. (both double sided, of course) I'm not sure about reliability/error issues though. (perhaps more an issue when you got into the HD 5 1/2" disks)
I did relatively little with them other than installing a handful of games, or attempting to. (Space Quest didn't really like being installed in windows 95, even in a DOS shell)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
Who says I hadn't? Grew up owning a C64, which only utilized datasette- and 5,25'' floppy drives. And the first PC I owned (a 386DX) had both a 5.25'' and a 3.5'' drive... which was particularly handy when one day, for some reason, the MBR of the hard-drive broke down... instead of buying a new harddisk, we just decided to permanently shut a bootdisk into the rarely used 5.25''-drive in order to boot the system. Worked like a charm.
There's a multitude of different formats in the same form factor, ranging from the 89 kB disks originally used on the Atari 800 (later extended), slightly larger capacity Apple II disks, funky VIC-20/C64 format (170 kB) to the 360 kB single density disks implemented on the original PC. (which later expanded to 720 kB and ~1.2 MB)
Quote:
But you're correct if you're referring to the huge 8''-Floppies...
I've actually used those, just for fun, but starting around 10 years ago I dug out my dad's old TRS-80 Model II... a business machine so not too much fun other than tinkering around a bit.
By that point 5 1/4" disks were already common on other systems though, but most at lower capacity. (including Tandy's earlier Model I and the succeeding Model 3 and 4)
I don't think those were ever used for games... (at least not commercially)
04-29-2010, 05:13 AM
Phantar
Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
I don't think those were ever used for games... (at least not commercially)
I think there were some official games released for the Tandy TRS-80 that utilized douple-sided 8'' DD-Floppies...
/edit: Could be mistaken, though... this was the only Picture of a TSR-80 Disc game I could find
