Finally, with the arrival of mass broadband Internet access, cheap Ethernet and USB flash drives, the floppy was no longer necessary for data transfer either, and the floppy disk was essentially superseded. Also higher-density backup formats were introduced (e.g.
Toward the end of the 1990s, software distribution gradually switched to CD-ROM for larger packages and online distribution for smaller programs. It was not unheard of for a large package like Adobe Photoshop to come on upwards of a dozen disks. This is true particularly on low-end systems - an early disk drive would haveĬost more than the computer itself hence manufacturers did not plan for their widespread use.īy the early 1990s, the increasing size of software meant that many programs were distributed on sets of multiple floppies. Storage method), printers, modems, and so on. Some systems such as the Commodore 64 did not follow this convention, and instead labeled the floppyĭrives starting at device 8, since these computers had already designated other device numbers to cassette drives (the default Those users with the luxury of a hard drive typicallyĭesignated it as the 'C:' drive, a convention that remains with Windows-based computers today, long after the decline of theįloppy disk's utility. The second floppy drive was the 'B:' or 'df1:' drive, and so on.
Since the floppy drive was the primary means of storing programs, it was typically designated as the 'A:' drive or 'df0:'ĭrive. Some computers had "smart" drives that contained their own CPUs and could allow the computer to multiprocess (for example,Īllowing the computer to run a spreadsheet calculation while the disk drive copied an entire disk by itself). Many home computers had their primary OS kernels stored permanently in on-board ROM chips, but stored the disk operating system on a floppy, whether it be a proprietary system, CP/M, or, later, DOS.
One), were ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s, being used on home and personal computer ("PC") platforms such as the Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amiga, and IBM PC to distribute software, transfer data between computers, and create small backups.īefore the popularization of the hard drive for PCs, floppy disks were typically used to store a computer's operating system (OS), application software, and other data. 3.4.2 Reported 3.5" DS-HD floppy capacityįloppy disks, also known as floppies or disks or diskettes (where the suffix -ette means little.3.3.2 Mitsumi's "Quick Disk" 3-inch floppies.3.2 The 5¼-inch minifloppy (5.25-inch floppy).