I haven’t used one in at least 10 years, but next year we will officially say goodbye to the floppy disk.
Sony has announced that it will halt sales of all 3.5 inch floppies in Japan by March 2011. Japan is one of the few countries where the storage medium is still available from Sony.
The move will come nearly 30 years after Sony produced its first line of 3.5in floppy disks. Most global shipments had already been halted, but the company had continued to offer the disks in Japan where the format had a larger user base.
Sony’s decision delivers what many consider to be the death knell for the floppy disk family after nearly four decades. Beginning with IBM’s first range of eight inch drives in 1971, the flexible storage format developed alongside the personal computing market in the final quarter of the 20th century.
The 3.5 inch disk was a huge improvement over the 5.25 inch floppy. I first used a 3.5 inch disk in the late 80s and stopped using them completely in the early 2000’s so 15 years or so…
Now what will I use for coasters?
I’ve installed a floppy drive in the last 4 or 5 boxes I’ve built, the last two with a Mitsumi floppy/card reader combo.
I figure that in another few years it will be a good way to securely store small amounts of data because ‘nobody’ will have a floppy drive.
Ummm… Real coasters?
Umm…Peter, “Security through obscurity” is not really that good an idea with a product that was produced for 30 years.
I still have some 5.25″ ones in the basement. I was going to throw them out, but they have some retro-tech chic now.
CD’s?