What is a Floppy Disk?
A floppy disk is an old mass storage medium that isn't normally used anymore. Floppy disks are sometimes found as the "save icon" in applications.
- Why are Floppy Disks Called "Floppy" If They Are Rigid?
- Why are Floppy Disks Called "Disks" If They Are Rectangular?
To use a floppy disk you need a floppy disk drive, but modern PCs don't have these. A floppy disk can only contain a few megabytes of data, e.g. 1.44 MB, while the modern equivalent, a USB flash drive, may contain terabytes of data, millions of times more, hence there is no use for floppies anymore.
Even when they were used, it was common for software to be split across multiple floppies because they couldn't fit into a single floppy. Personally, my only experience with floppies was playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, which I had in a floppy because games at the time weren't hundreds of gigabytes, a few hundred kilobytes were enough.
Surf The Web
- It's All Geek to Me - Restoring Old Floppy Discs [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5MkWtQwx-s] (accessed 2025-01-11)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk (accessed 2025-01-11)
- https://computer.howstuffworks.com/floppy-disk-drive.htm (accessed 2025-01-11)