A floppy disk, also known as a floppy or a diskette, is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a fabric that removes dust particles from the spinning disk. Floppy disks were created in 1967 by IBM as an alternative to buying hard drives, which were extremely expensive at the time. The first floppy disk was 8 inches in diameter with a magnetic coating, enclosed in a cardboard case. Over time, floppy disks became smaller, with the arrival of 5.25-inch models in the late 1970s, and the final floppy disks, which debuted in the 1980s, were 3.5 inches in diameter.
Floppy disks became commonplace during the 1980s and 1990s in their use with personal computers to distribute software, transfer data, and create backups. Before hard disks became affordable to the general population, floppy disks were often used to store a computers operating system (OS). Most home computers from that time have an elementary OS and BASIC stored in read-only memory (ROM), with the option of loading a more advanced OS from a floppy disk. Floppy disks are used for emergency boots in aging systems lacking support for other bootable media and for BIOS updates, since most BIOS and firmware programs can still be executed from bootable floppy disks. The music and theatre industries still use equipment requiring standard floppy disks (e.g. synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, sequencers, and lighting consoles).
Floppy disks are magnetic storage media for computer systems. They are composed of a thin, flexible magnetic disk sealed in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure. Data is arranged on the surface of a disk in concentric tracks, and the disk is inserted in the computer’s floppy disk drive, an assembly of magnetic heads and a mechanical device for rotating the disk for reading or writing purposes. A small electromagnet, called a magnetic head, writes a binary digit (1 or 0) onto the disk by magnetizing a tiny spot on the disk in different directions and reads digits by detecting the magnetization direction of the spots.
Floppy disks have become a thing of the past for storing data, as they have limited storage capacity and have been replaced by more advanced storage media such as CDs, DVDs, and USB flash drives. However, floppy disks still have an important role in the veteran computer users lives, as they were the primary means to transfer data between computers before the 1990s.
