Discontinuation of the Floppy Disk at the End of the Year??

14th September 2010

ES Admin

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After more than 40 years, the floppy disk familiar as magnetic data medium and its drive departs from the history of the storage medium market. Now that manufacturers, such as TEAC, have ceased the production of the floppy disk drives, DSM Computer will also deliver industry systems with FD drives only until the end of 2010.

Who does not remember with pleasure the 8-inch diskettes of those days? At the beginning with only 128 KB storage capacity, which until the introduction of the 5.25-inch diskette and floppy drive, it was expanded to an unbelievable 1 MB in the 1970s. Operating system installations ran from several hours until as long as a complete day. This meant no problems could be allowed to occur during the program installation. With the popularity of the home computer after 1982, the recording density grew continually. At the beginning there were SD (Single-Density) and DD (Double-Density / 2D) floppy disks on the market with capacities ranging from 128 KB through to 512 KB. These were successively replaced by QD (Quad-Density / 4D), HD (High-Density) and the ED (Extended-Density). The data could be stored over an extended time period provided the floppy disks were protected from effects such as humidity and magnetism.

The 1.44 MB drive remained as standard since its market introduction in the 1990s until today. Now that the data volumes and the requirements placed on the storage capacity have become ever larger, the diskette drive has been increasingly displaced from the computer market. Software programs and data now began to be stored on CDs and DVDs. These media are the current standard in computer systems.
Many users, however, do not know that in some cases a FD drive is still required. For industrial CPU boards with onboard RAID function, as also often used in the automation, the drive for the RAID functionality under Microsoft® Windows® XP must be installed from a FD drive.
Consequently, DSM Computer has created for its customers a special installation CD for Microsoft® Windows® XP that has already integrated the RAID/AHCI drivers and permits the inclusion of the drivers without requiring a connected floppy disk drive.

A 40-year successful storage era comes to an end with the discontinuation of the FD drives. As pioneer for today's various storage media, such as DVD-ROM, Blue-Ray, Flash memory and USB, it will certainly remain in fond memory.