A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular

plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles. They are read and written by a floppy disk drive (FDD).

Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch (200 mm) media and later in 5.25-inch (133 mm) and 3.5inch (89 mm) sizes, were a ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s well into the first decade of the 21st century.[

By 2010, computer motherboards were rarely manufactured with floppy drive support; 3 12" floppies could be used as an external USB drive, but 5 14", 8", and non-standard drives could only be handled by old equipment. While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy industrial computer equipment, they have been superseded by data storage methods with much greater capacity, such as USB flash drives, portable external hard disk drives, optical discs, memory cards, and computer networks. s

Main article: History of the floppy disk The earliest floppy disks, developed in the late 1960s, were 8 inches (200 mm) in diameter;[1] they became commercially available in 1971.[2] These disks and associated drives were produced and improved upon by IBM and other companies such as Memorex, Shugart Associates, and Burroughs Corporation.[3] The term "floppy disk" appeared in print as early as 1970,[4] and although in 1973 IBM announced its first media as "Type 1 Diskette" the industry continued to use the terms "floppy disk" or "floppy". In 1976, Shugart Associates introduced the first 5 14-inch FDD. By 1978 there were more than 10 manufacturers producing such FDDs. There were competing floppy disk formats, with hard and soft sector versions and encoding schemes such as FM, MFM and GCR. The 5 1/4 inch format displaced the 8-inch one for most applications, and the hard sectored disk format disappeared. In 1984, IBM introduced the 1.2 MB dual sided floppy disk along with its AT model. IBM started using the 720 kB double density 3.5" microfloppy disk on its Convertible laptop computer and the 1.44 MB high density version with the PS/2 line in 1986. These disk drives could be added to older PC models. In 1988 IBM introduced a drive for 2.88 MB "DSED" diskettes in its top-of-the-line PS/2 models but this was a commercial failure.

Throughout the early 1980s, limitations of the 5 14-inch format became clear. Originally designed to be more practical than the 8-inch format, it was itself too large; as the quality of recording media grew, data could be stored in a smaller area. A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2, 2 12, 3 and 3 12 inches (and Sony's 90.0 mm 94.0 mm disk) offered by various companies. They all shared a number of advantages over the old format, including a rigid case with a sliding write protection tab, protecting them from damage; the large market share of the 5 14-inch format made it difficult for these new formats to gain significant market share. A variant on the Sony design, introduced in 1982 by a large number of manufacturers, was then rapidly adopted; by 1988 the 3 12-inch was outselling the 5 14-inch.[ By the end of the 1980s, the 5 14-inch disks had been superseded by the 3 1 -inch disks. By the mid-1990s, the 5 1 -inch drives had virtually 2 4 disappeared as the 3 12-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk. The advantages of the 3 12-inch disk were its smaller size and its plastic case which provided better protection from dirt and other environmental risks.

Imation USB floppy drive, model 01946: an external drive that accepts high-density disks

Imation USB floppy drive, model 01946: an external drive that accepts high-density disks Floppy disks became ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s in their use with personal computers and home computers to distribute software, transfer data, and create backups. Before hard disks became affordable, floppy disks were often used to store a computer's operating system (OS). Most home computers had a primary OS and BASIC stored as ROM, with the option of loading a more advanced disk operating system from a floppy disk. By the early 1990s, the increasing software size meant large packages like Windows or Adobe Photoshop required a dozen disks or more. In 1996, there were an estimated five billion floppy disks in use.[7] Then, distribution of larger packages was gradually replaced by CD-ROM and online distribution (for smaller programs). An attempt to continue the floppy disk was the SuperDisk in the late 1990s, with a capacity of 120 MB[8] and backward compatible with standard 3 12-inch floppies; a format war briefly occurred between SuperDisk and other high density removable disc products, although ultimately flash memory, recordable CDs/DVDs, and online storage would render the matter moot. External USB-based floppy disk drives are still available; many modern systems provide firmware support for booting from such a drive.