Several types of floppy diskettes include the 12-inch floppy disks, 5.25-inch floppy disks, 3.5-inch floppy disks, as well as the SuperDisks.
Before thumb drives, CDs, and DVDs came, there were floppy diskettes for storing computer data. Although you may be aware of the 3.5-inch floppy diskettes, there are also other forms of floppy diskettes. Check out this article to know more forms of floppy diskettes.
12-inch floppy disks
Twelve-inch floppy diskettes were highly utilized during the 1970s to change punch card storage media. This type of diskette was mainly utilized for business market, and also for mainframe computers that were made by IBM. In the floppy disk is a magnetic media covered by a thin, plastic casing, that is very bendable; and thus the disk was given the name "floppy diskette". Eventually, the dimensions of the floppy diskette decreased to 8 inches.
5.25-Inch floppy disks
Home computing started to rise in number in the middle of 1970s. This was also the period that 5.25-inch floppy disks became popular. This diskette was really a progression from the 8-inch floppy diskette. The 5.25-inch floppy diskette was utilized in the middle of 1970s with the low memory type, that can store files up to 100 kb only. This type of floppy diskette then progressed to high memory, that can provide up to 1.2 mb of memory capacity. All the home computer systems at the time had the privilege to use this kind of diskette, particularly the IBM AT computer models, as well as the Commodore 64. At present, this kind of diskette is still actually being sold in the market, primarily for those people who still want to utilize traditional computer systems.
3.5-inch floppy disks
When the 1980s emerged around, another form of floppy diskette surfaced and took over the popularity of the previous floppy disks. This was the 3.5-inch floppy disk. These diskettes became well-known because they could save a bigger amount of information, that is around 1.4 mb. The 1980s was also the period when the first Windows operating system emerged, which needed several diskettes just to use a big program. Together with their big memory capacity, these diskettes also had hard plastic casings, which made them less delicate, and they can also be reformatted several times. There was also a Mac version of this kind of diskette. Up to this very day, some stores still sell these diskettes, that already include floppy disk holders, for people who still own and utilize old computers which have floppy disk drives.
SuperDisk
During the late 1980s, another type of floppy disk was made, that was the SuperDisk. This disk had a much higher memory with approximately 120 megabytes of storage capacity, and it was ideally meant to replace the 3.5-inch floppy disk. Mac was the first one to come up with computers having SuperDisk drives, and other PCs still had the 3.5-inch floppy drives, although they can be replaced with SuperDisk hard disks. The SuperDisk drive can read not just SuperDisks, but also regular 3.5-inch floppy disks. Although the SuperDisk may have outstanding capabilities than regular 3.5-inch floppies, they weren't able to replace the popularity of the 3.5-inch disks because they were just too expensive compared to regular ones.
Floppy disks can actually last a long time as long as they are handled well.
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