Product Code Database
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) 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 store digital data which can be read and written when the disk is inserted into a floppy disk drive ( FDD) connected to or inside a computer or other device. The four most popular (and commercially available) categories of floppy disks (and disk drives) are the 8-inch, 5¼-inch, 3½-inch and high-capacity floppy disks and drives.
The first floppy disks, invented and made by IBM in 1971, had a disk diameter of . Subsequently, the 5¼-inch (130 mm) and then the 3½-inch (90 mm) became a ubiquitous form of data storage and transfer into the first years of the 21st century. By the end of the 1980s, 5¼-inch disks had been superseded by 3½-inch disks. During this time, PCs frequently came equipped with drives of both sizes. By the mid-1990s, 5¼-inch drives had virtually disappeared, as the 3½-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk. The advantages of the 3½-inch disk were its higher capacity, its smaller physical size, and its rigid case which provided better protection from dirt and other environmental risks.
Floppy disks were so common in late 20th-century culture that many electronic and software programs continue to use save icons that look like floppy disks well into the 21st century, as a form of skeuomorphic design. While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy system, they have been superseded by data storage methods with much greater data storage capacity and data transfer speed, such as USB flash drives, , , and storage available through local and cloud storage.
While the original IBM 8-inch disk was actually so defined, the other sizes are defined in the metric system, their usual names being but rough approximations.
Different sizes of floppy disks are mechanically incompatible, and disks can fit only one size of drive. Drive assemblies with both 3½-inch and 5¼-inch slots were available during the transition period between the sizes, but they contained two separate drive mechanisms. In addition, there are many subtle, usually software-driven incompatibilities between the two. 5¼-inch disks formatted for use with Apple II computers would be unreadable and treated as unformatted on a Commodore, As computer platforms began to form, attempts were made at interchangeability. For example, the "SuperDrive" included from the Macintosh SE to the Power Macintosh G3 could read, write and format IBM PC format 3½-inch disks, but few IBM-compatible computers had drives that do the reverse. 8-inch, 5¼-inch and 3½-inch drives were manufactured in a variety of sizes, most to fit standardized . Alongside the common disk sizes were non-classical sizes for specialized systems.
Floppy disks of the first standard are 8 inches in diameter, protected by a flexible plastic jacket. It was a read-only device used by IBM as a way of loading microcode. Read/write floppy disks and their drives became available in 1972, but it was IBM's 1973 introduction of the 3740 data entry system that began the establishment of floppy disks, called by IBM the Diskette 1, as an industry standard for information interchange. Diskettes formatted for this system stored 242,944 bytes. Early used for engineering, business, or word processing often used one or more 8-inch disk drives for removable storage; the CP/M operating system was developed for microcomputers with 8-inch drives.
The family of 8-inch disks and drives increased over time and later versions could store up to 1.2 MB; many microcomputer applications did not need that much capacity on one disk, so a smaller size disk with lower-cost media and drives was feasible.The 5¼-inch drive succeeded the 8-inch size in many applications, and developed to the same storage capacity as the larger 8-inch size, using higher-density media and recording techniques.
In 1984, IBM introduced with its PC/AT the 1.2 MB (1,228,800 bytes) dual-sided 5¼-inch floppy disk, but it never became very popular. IBM started using the 720 KB double density 3½-inch microfloppy disk on its Convertible laptop computer in 1986 and the 1.44 MB (1,474,560 bytes) high-density version with the IBM Personal System/2 (PS/2) line in 1987. These disk drives could be added to older PC models. In 1988, Y-E Data introduced a drive for 2.88 MB Double-Sided Extended-Density (DSED) diskettes which was used by IBM in its top-of-the-line PS/2 and some RS/6000 models and in the second-generation NeXTcube and NeXTstation; however, this format had limited market success due to lack of standards and movement to 1.44 MB drives.
Throughout the early 1980s, limits of the 5¼-inch format became clear. Originally designed to be more practical than the 8-inch format, it was becoming considered too large; as the quality of recording media grew, data could be stored in a smaller area. Several solutions were developed, with drives at 2-, 2½-, 3-, 3¼-, 3½- and 4-inches (and Sony's disk) offered by various companies. They all had several advantages over the old format, including a rigid case with a sliding metal (or later, sometimes plastic) shutter over the head slot, which helped protect the delicate magnetic medium from dust and damage, and a sliding write protection tab, which was far more convenient than the adhesive tabs used with earlier disks. The established market for the 5¼-inch format made it difficult for these mutually incompatible new formats to gain significant market share. A variant on the Sony design, introduced in 1983 by many manufacturers, was then rapidly adopted. By 1988, the 3½-inch was outselling the 5¼-inch.
The head gap of an 80‑track high-density (1.2 MB in the MFM format) 5¼‑inch drive (a.k.a. mini diskette, Mini disk, or Minifloppy) is smaller than that of a 40‑track double-density (360 KB if double-sided) drive but can also format, read and write 40‑track disks provided the controller supports double stepping or has a switch to do so. A blank 40‑track disk formatted and written on an 80‑track drive can be taken to its native drive without problems, and a disk formatted on a 40‑track drive can be used on an 80‑track drive. Disks written on a 40‑track drive and then updated on an 80 track drive become unreadable on any 40‑track drives due to track width incompatibility.
Single-sided disks were coated on both sides. The reason usually given for the higher price was that double sided disks were certified error-free on both sides of the media. Double-sided disks could be used in some drives for single-sided disks, as long as an index signal was not needed. This was done one side at a time, by turning them over (); more expensive dual-head drives which could read both sides without turning over were later produced, and eventually became used universally.
|alt=Internal parts of a 3½-inch floppy disk |Internal parts of a 3½-inch floppy disk.In the early 1980s, many manufacturers introduced smaller floppy drives and media in various formats. A consortium of 21 companies eventually settled on a 3½-inch design known as the Micro diskette, Micro disk, or Micro floppy, similar to a Sony design but improved to support both single-sided and double-sided media, with formatted capacities generally of 360 KB and 720 KB respectively. Single-sided drives of the consortium design first shipped in 1983, and double-sided in 1984. The double-sided, high-density 1.44 MB (actually 1440 KiB = 1.41 MiB or 1.47 MB) disk drive, which would become the most popular, first shipped in 1986. The first Macintosh computers used single-sided 3½-inch floppy disks, but with 400 KB formatted capacity. These were followed in 1986 by double-sided 800 KB floppies. The higher capacity was achieved at the same recording density by varying the disk-rotation speed with head position so that the linear speed of the disk was closer to constant. Later Macs could also read and write 1.44 MB HD disks in PC format with fixed rotation speed. Higher capacities were similarly achieved by Acorn's RISC OS (800 KB for DD, 1,600 KB for HD) and AmigaOS (880 KB for DD, 1,760 KB for HD).
1) Hole indicates a high-capacity disk.
2) Hub engages with the drive motor.
3) Shutter protects the surface.
4) Plastic housing.
5) Polyester sheet reduces friction.
6) Magnetic-coated plastic disk.
7) Schematic of one sector (tracks/sectors not visible on real disks).
8) [[Write protection]] tab. ]]
Most 3½-inch disks have a rectangular hole in one corner which, if obstructed, write-enables the disk. A sliding detented piece can be moved to block or reveal the part of the rectangular hole that is sensed by the drive. The HD 1.44 MB disks have a second, unobstructed hole in the opposite corner that identifies them as being of that capacity.
In IBM-compatible PCs, higher-density 3½-inch floppy drives can read lower-density media, but writing and formatting across densities has reliability issues and was not officially supported by manufacturers. Writing at different densities than those at which disks were intended, sometimes by altering the density detection hole, was possible but not supported by manufacturers. A hole on one side of a 3½-inch disk can be altered to make some disk drives and operating systems treat the disk as one of higher or lower density, for bidirectional compatibility or economic reasons. Some computers, such as the PS/2 and Acorn Archimedes, ignored these holes altogether.
Generally, the term floppy disk persisted, even though later style floppy disks have a rigid case around an internal floppy disk.
In 1990, an attempt was made to standardize details for a 20MB 3½-inch format floppy. At the time, "three different technologies that are not interchangeable" existed. One major goal was that the to-be-developed standard drive be backward compatible: that it be able to read 720 KB and 1.44 MB floppies.
Apple introduced the iMac G3 in 1998 with a CD-ROM drive but no floppy drive; this made USB-connected floppy drives popular accessories, as the iMac came without any writable removable media device.
CD-R were touted as an alternative, because of the greater capacity, compatibility with existing CD-ROM drives, and—with the advent of CD-RW and packet writing—a similar reusability as floppy disks. However, CD-R/RWs remained mostly an archival medium, not a medium for exchanging data or editing files on the medium itself, because there was no common standard for packet writing which allowed for small updates. Other formats, such as magneto-optical discs, had the flexibility of floppy disks combined with greater capacity, but remained niche due to costs. High-capacity backward compatible floppy technologies became popular for a while and were sold as an option or even included in standard PCs, but in the long run, their use was limited to professionals and enthusiasts.
Flash-based USB thumb drives finally provided a practical and popular replacement that supported traditional file systems and all common usage scenarios of floppy disks. As opposed to other solutions, no new drive type or special software was required that impeded adoption, since all that was necessary was an already common USB port.
Floppy disks are used for emergency boots in aging systems lacking support for other boot disk and for BIOS updates, since most BIOS and firmware programs can still be executed from bootable floppy disks. If BIOS updates fail or become corrupt, floppy drives can sometimes be used to perform a recovery. The music and theatre industries still use equipment requiring standard floppy disks (e.g. synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, sequencers, and lighting consoles). Industrial automation equipment such as programmable Machine industry and may not have a USB interface; data and programs are then loaded from disks, damageable in industrial environments. This equipment may not be replaced due to cost or requirement for continuous availability; existing software emulation and virtualization do not solve this problem because a customized operating system is used that has no device driver for USB devices. Hardware floppy disk emulators can be made to interface floppy-disk controllers to a USB port that can be used for flash drives.
In May 2016, the United States Government Accountability Office released a report that covered the need to upgrade or replace legacy computer systems within federal agencies. According to this document, old IBM Series/1 minicomputers running on 8-inch floppy disks are still used to coordinate "the operational functions of the United States' nuclear forces". The government planned to update some of the technology by the end of the 2017 fiscal year. Use in Japan's government ended in 2024.
Windows 10 and Windows 11 no longer come with drivers for floppy disk drives (both internal and external). However, they will still support them with a separate device driver provided by Microsoft.
The British Airways Boeing 747-400 fleet, up to its retirement in 2020, used 3½-inch floppy disks to load avionics software.
Sony, who had been in the floppy disk business since 1983, ended domestic sales of all six 3½-inch floppy disk models as of March 2011. This has been viewed by some as the end of the floppy disk. While production of new floppy disk media has ceased, sales and uses of this media from inventories is expected to continue until at least 2026.
Inside the cover are two layers of fabric with the magnetic medium sandwiched in the middle. The fabric is designed to reduce friction between the medium and the outer cover, and catch particles of debris abraded off the disk to keep them from accumulating on the heads. The cover is usually a one-part sheet, double-folded with flaps glued or spot-welded together.
A small notch on the side of the disk identifies whether it is writable, as detected by a mechanical switch or photoelectric sensor. In the 8-inch disk, the notch being covered or not present enables writing, while in the 5¼-inch disk, the notch being present and uncovered enables writing. Tape may be used over the notch to change the mode of the disk. Punch devices were sold to convert read-only 5¼" disks to writable ones, and also to enable writing on the unused side of single-sided disks for computers with single-sided drives. The latter worked because single- and double-sided disks typically contained essentially identical actual magnetic media, for manufacturing efficiency. Disks whose obverse and reverse sides were thus used separately in single-sided drives were known as . Disk notching 5¼" floppies for PCs was generally only required where users wanted to overwrite original 5¼" disks of store-bought software, which somewhat commonly shipped with no notch present.
Another LED/photo-transistor pair located near the center of the disk detects the index hole once per rotation in the magnetic disk. Detection occurs whenever the drive's sensor, the holes in the correctly inserted floppy's plastic envelope and a single hole in the rotating floppy disk medium line up. This mechanism is used to detect the angular start of each track, and whether or not the disk is rotating at the correct speed. Early 8‑inch and 5¼‑inch disks also had holes for each sector in the enclosed magnetic medium, in addition to the index hole, with the same radius from the center, for alignment with the same envelope hole. These were termed hard sectoring disks. Later soft-Disk sector disks have only one index hole in the medium, and sector position is determined by the disk controller or low-level software from patterns marking the start of a sector. Generally, the same drives are used to read and write both types of disks, with only the disks and controllers differing. Some operating systems using soft sectors, such as Apple DOS, do not use the index hole, and the drives designed for such systems often lack the corresponding sensor; this was mainly a hardware cost-saving measure.
Typical 3½-inch disk magnetic coating materials are:
Two holes at the bottom left and right indicate whether the disk is write-protected and whether it is high-density; these holes are spaced as far apart as the holes in punched A4 paper, allowing write-protected high-density floppy disks to be clipped into international standard (ISO 838) One of the chief usability problems of the floppy disk is its vulnerability; even inside a closed plastic housing, the disk medium is highly sensitive to dust, condensation and temperature extremes. As with all magnetic storage, it is vulnerable to magnetic fields. Blank disks have been distributed with an extensive set of warnings, cautioning the user not to expose it to dangerous conditions. Rough treatment or removing the disk from the drive while the magnetic media is still spinning is likely to cause damage to the disk, drive head, or stored data. On the other hand, the 3½‑inch floppy disk has been lauded for its mechanical usability by human–computer interaction expert Donald Norman:
The following summarizes specific structural differences in the several high-capacity FDs with more details contained in linked articles:
Some errors are soft error and can be resolved by re-trying the read operation; other errors are permanent and will signal a failure to the operating system if multiple attempts to read the data still fail
In some 5¼-inch drives, insertion of the disk compresses and locks an ejection spring which partially ejects the disk upon opening the catch or lever. This enables a smaller concave area for the thumb and fingers to grasp the disk during removal
Newer 5¼-inch drives and all 3½-inch drives automatically engage the spindle and heads when a disk is inserted, doing the opposite with the press of the eject button
On Apple Macintosh computers with built-in 3½-inch disk drives, the ejection button is replaced by software controlling an ejection motor which only does so when the operating system no longer needs to access the drive. The user could drag the image of the floppy drive to the trash can on the desktop to eject the disk. In the case of a power failure or drive malfunction, a loaded disk can be removed manually by inserting a straightened paper clip into a small hole at the drive's front panel, just as one would do with a CD-ROM drive in a similar situation. The X68000 has soft-eject 5¼-inch drives. Some late-generation IBM PS/2 machines had soft-eject 3½-inch disk drives as well for which some issues of DOS (i.e. PC DOS 5.02 and higher) offered an EJECT command.
The Apple II computer system is notable in that it does not have an index-hole sensor and ignores the presence of hard or soft sectoring. Instead, it uses special repeating data synchronization patterns written to the disk between each sector, to assist the computer in finding and synchronizing with the data in each track.
Most 3½-inch drives use a constant speed drive motor and contain the same number of sectors across all tracks. This is sometimes referred to as constant angular velocity. In order to fit more data onto a disk, some 3½-inch drives (notably the Macintosh External 400K and 800K drives) instead use constant linear velocity, which uses a variable-speed drive motor that spins more slowly as the head moves away from the center of the disk, maintaining the same speed of the head(s) relative to the surface(s) of the disk. This allows more sectors to be written to the longer middle and outer tracks as the track length increases.
| + Historical sequence of floppy disk formats
In quantities of bits (b) or bytes (B) Prefixes: k = 1,000; K = 1,024; M may mean 1,000,000 or 1,048, 576 or some other multiple. | |||
| 8-inch: IBM 23FD (read-only) | 1971 | 81.664 kB | Not marketed commercially |
| 8-inch: Memorex 650 | 1972 | 175 kB | 1.5 megabit full track |
| 8-inch: SS SD IBM 33FD / Shugart 901 | 1973 | 242.844 kB | 3.1 megabit unformatted |
| 8-inch: DS SD IBM 43FD / Shugart 850 | 1976 | 568.320 kB | 6.2 megabit unformatted |
| 5¼-inch (35 track) Shugart SA 400 | 1976 | 87.5 KB | 110 kB |
| 8-inch DS DD IBM 53FD / Shugart 850 | 1977 | 962–1,184 KB depending upon sector size | 1.2 MB |
| 5¼-inch DD | 1978 | 360 or 800 KB | 360 KB |
| 5¼-inch Apple Disk II (Pre-DOS 3.3) | 1978 | 113.75 KB (256 byte sectors, 13 sectors/track, 35 tracks) | 113 KB |
| 5¼-inch Atari DOS 2.0S | 1979 | 90 KB (128 byte sectors, 18 sectors/track, 40 tracks) | 90 KB |
| 5¼-inch Commodore DOS 1.0 (SSDD) | 1979 | 172.5 KB | 170 KB |
| 5¼-inch Commodore DOS 2.1 (SSDD) | 1980 | 170.75 KB | 170 KB |
| 5¼-inch Apple Disk II (DOS 3.3) | 1980 | 140 KB (256 byte sectors, 16 sectors/track, 35 tracks) | 140 KB |
| 5¼-inch Apple Disk II ( Roland Gustafsson's RWTS18) | 1988 | 157.5 KB (768 byte sectors, 6 sectors/track, 35 tracks) | Capacity not marketed (game publisher's privately-contracted third-party custom DOS). |
| 5¼-inch Victor 9000 / ACT Sirius 1 (SSDD) | 1982 | 612 KB (512 byte sectors, 11–19 variable sectors / track, 80 tracks) | 600 KB |
| 5¼-inch Victor 9000 / ACT Sirius 1 (DSDD) | 1982 | 1,196 KB (512 byte sectors, 11–19 variable sectors / track, 80 tracks) | 1,200 KB |
| 3½-inch HP SS | 1982 | 280 KB (256 byte sectors, 16 sectors/track, 70 tracks) | 264 KB |
| 5¼-inch Atari DOS 3 | 1983 | 127 KB (128 byte sectors, 26 sectors/track, 40 tracks) | 130 KB |
| 3-inch | 1982 | ? | 125 KB (SS/SD), 500 KB (DS/DD) |
| 3½-inch SS DD (at release) | 1983 | 360 KB (400 KB on Macintosh) | 500 KB |
| 3½-inch DS DD | 1983 | 720 KB (800 KB on Macintosh and RISC OS, 880 KB on Amiga) | 1 MB |
| 5¼-inch QD | 1980 | 720 KB | 720 KB |
| 5¼-inch RX50 (SSQD) | 400 KB | ||
| 5¼-inch HD | 1982 | 1,200 KB | 1.2 MB |
| 3-inch Mitsumi Quick Disk | 1985 | 128 to 256 KB | ? |
| 3-inch Famicom Disk System (derived from Quick Disk) | 1986 | 112 KB | 128 KB |
| 2-inch | 1989 | 720 KB | ? |
| 2½-inch Sharp CE-1600F, CE-140F (chassis: FDU-250, medium: CE-1650F) | 1986 | flippy disk diskette with 62,464 bytes per side (512 byte sectors, 8 sectors/track, 16 tracks, GCR (4/5) recording) | 2× 64 KB (128 KB) |
| 5¼-inch Perpendicular | 1986 | 100 KB per inch | ? |
| 3½-inch HD | 1986 | 1,440 KB (512 bytes sectors, 18 sectors/track, 160 tracks); 1,760 KB on Amiga | 1.44 MB (2.0 MB unformatted) |
| 3½-inch HD | 1987 | 1,600 KB on RISC OS | 1.6 MB |
| 3½-inch ED | 1987 | 2,880 KB (3,200 KB on Sinclair QL) | 2.88 MB |
| 3½-inch Floptical (LS) | 1991 | 20,385 KB | 21 MB |
| 3½-inch SuperDisk (LS-120) | 1996 | 120,375 KB | 120 MB |
| 3½-inch SuperDisk (LS-240) | 1997 | 240,750 KB | 240 MB |
| 3½-inch HiFD | 1998/99 | ? | 150/200 MB |
| Abbreviations: | |||
| Formatted storage capacity is total size of all sectors on the disk:
Marketed capacity is the capacity, typically unformatted, by the original media OEM vendor or in the case of IBM media, the first OEM thereafter. Other formats may get more or less capacity from the same drives and disks. | |||
Data is generally written to floppy disks in sectors (angular blocks) and tracks (concentric rings at a constant radius). For example, the HD format of 3½-inch floppy disks uses 512 bytes per sector, 18 sectors per track, 80 tracks per side and two sides, for a total of 1,474,560 bytes per disk. Some disk controllers can vary these parameters at the user's request, increasing storage on the disk, although they may not be able to be read on machines with other controllers. For example, Microsoft applications were often distributed on 3½-inch 1.68 MB DMF disks formatted with 21 sectors instead of 18; they could still be recognized by a standard controller. Constant linear velocity was generally not used on floppy disks, so most computer systems used constant angular velocity (CAV) format, with the disk spinning at a constant speed and the sectors holding the same amount of information on each track regardless of radial location. A notable exception was Apple, which implemented CLV in early Macintosh computers by spinning the disk more slowly when the head was at the edge, while maintaining the data rate, allowing 400 KB of storage per side and an extra 80 KB on a double-sided disk.
Because the sectors have constant angular size, the 512 bytes in each sector are compressed more near the disk's center. A more space-efficient technique would be to increase the number of sectors per track toward the outer edge of the disk, from 18 to 30 for instance, thereby keeping nearly constant the amount of physical disk space used for storing each sector; an example is zone bit recording. Apple implemented this in early Macintosh computers by spinning the disk more slowly when the head was at the edge, while maintaining the data rate, allowing 400 KB of storage per side and an extra 80 KB on a double-sided disk. This higher capacity came with a disadvantage: the format used a unique drive mechanism and control circuitry, meaning that Mac disks could not be read on other computers. Apple eventually reverted to constant angular velocity on HD floppy disks with their later machines, still unique to Apple as they supported the older variable-speed formats.
Disk formatting is usually done by a utility program supplied by the computer operating system manufacturer; generally, it sets up a file storage directory system on the disk, and initializes its sectors and tracks. Areas of the disk unusable for storage due to flaws can be locked (marked as "bad sectors") so that the operating system does not attempt to use them. This was time-consuming so many environments had quick formatting which skipped the error checking process. When floppy disks were often used, disks pre-formatted for popular computers were sold. The unformatted capacity of a floppy disk does not include the sector and track headings of a formatted disk; the difference in storage between them depends on the drive's application. Floppy disk drive and media manufacturers specify the unformatted capacity (for example, 2 MB for a standard 3½-inch HD floppy). It is implied that this should not be exceeded, since doing so will most likely result in performance problems. DMF was introduced permitting 1.68 MB to fit onto an otherwise standard 3½-inch disk; utilities then appeared allowing disks to be formatted as such.
Mixtures of decimal prefixes and binary sector sizes require care to properly calculate total capacity. For example, 1.44 MB 3½-inch HD disks have the "M" prefix peculiar to their context, coming from their capacity of 2,880 512-byte sectors (1,440 KiB), consistent with neither a decimal megabyte nor a binary mebibyte (MiB). Hence, these disks hold 1.47 MB or 1.41 MiB. Usable data capacity is a function of the disk format used, which in turn is determined by the FDD controller and its settings. Differences between such formats can result in capacities ranging from approximately 1,300 to 1,760 KiB (1.80 MB) on a standard 3½-inch high-density floppy (and up to nearly 2 MB with utilities such as 2M/2MGUI). The highest capacity techniques require much tighter matching of drive head geometry between drives, something not always possible and unreliable. For example, the SuperDisk drive supports a 32 MB capacity on standard 3½-inch HD disks, but this is a write-once technique, and requires its own drive.
The raw maximum transfer rate of 3½-inch ED floppy drives (2.88 MB) is nominally 1,000 kilobits/s, or approximately 83% that of single-speed CD-ROM (71% of audio CD). This represents the speed of raw data bits moving under the read head; however, the effective speed is somewhat less due to space used for headers, gaps and other format fields and can be even further reduced by delays to seek time.
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 standard floppy disks in use.
An attempt to enhance the existing 3½-inch designs was the SuperDisk in the late 1990s, using very narrow data tracks and a high precision head guidance mechanism with a capacity of 120 Megabyte and backward-compatibility with standard 3½-inch floppies; a format war briefly occurred between SuperDisk and other high-density floppy-disk products, although ultimately recordable CDs/DVDs, solid-state flash storage, and eventually cloud-based online storage would render all these removable disk formats obsolete. External USB-based floppy disk drives are still available, and many modern systems provide firmware support for booting from such drives.
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