If you can remember a time before iPods and iPads, and when PCs didn't even play CDs, then you not only recall, but certainly owned a 3.5″ floppy. Those days are nostalgia, as Sony announced the death of the floppy disk drive.Created in the early 1980s as a smaller, higher-capacity successor to larger formats, the 3.5″ initially had a capacity of around 280 kilobytes. With models available in both single and double-sided versions, along with three different densities, the format could eventually hold 1.44MB.
That's about enough to store a minute or so of audio. Aside from size and capacity, the major difference between the 3.5″ and its 5.25″ predecessor was that despite the name (which referred to the disk itself), the 3.5″ disk came in a solid plastic casing. This made it both less susceptible to accidental damage.
The format pretty much overtook its 5.25″ predecessor in 1988 and was the main recordable media format through much of the 1990s. Eventually, it was supplanted by CDs, and later DVDs. Sony, which was the last major 3.5″ disk manufacturer and had wound up with a dominant market share, has now announced it limited supply to only cover a few markets in March and will cease production in Japan early next year. PCWorld noted that while 12 million 3.5″ disks were sold in Japan by Sony last year, the total data which could be stored on them wouldn’t fill one side of a Blu-ray disc.
The format pretty much overtook its 5.25″ predecessor in 1988 and was the main recordable media format through much of the 1990s. Eventually, it was supplanted by CDs, and later DVDs. Sony, which was the last major 3.5″ disk manufacturer and had wound up with a dominant market share, has now announced it limited supply to only cover a few markets in March and will cease production in Japan early next year. PCWorld noted that while 12 million 3.5″ disks were sold in Japan by Sony last year, the total data which could be stored on them wouldn’t fill one side of a Blu-ray disc.
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