Floppy Disk Drive

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2025-01-11

What is a Floppy Disk Drive?

A floppy disk drive (abbreviated FDD) is a device in which a floppy disk is inserted. Modern PCs don't have these anymore as floppy disks are considered obsolete technology. They were replaced by CDs, which were then replaced by USB flash drives.

An opened beige computer tower. The front panel has a wide drive with a a light and a button and a rectangular part (the CD drive), and under it a smaller drive with a light, a button, and a rectangular slot. — An old computer tower with a CD drive (top) and a floppy disk drive (under it). Photo: Ryan Snyder on Flickr. License: CC BY 2.0.

Note: floppy disks varied in physical size (inches of diameter), so floppy disk drives also varied in size. Older floppy disks from the 80's were much larger than the "modern" diskette of the 2000's era.

A photo featuring floppy disks of various sizes, a CD, a DVD, memory cards, and tapes. — A photo featuring various removable storage media: an 8" floppy disk, 5.25" floppy disk, 3.5" floppy disk, cassette tape, 8mm tape, CD, DVD, ZX Microdrive, SDHC card, CompactFlash card, and a USB disk. Photo: David Smith on Flickr. License: CC BY 2.0.

On PCs around the year 2000, floppy disk drives existed as horizontal slots integrated on the tower. Older computers, e.g. from the 80's, may not have integrated drives, and some that did used vertical slots instead.

A beige block-shaped device with two vertical slots at the front and a power button. Text printed on the device reads NEC Disk Unit PC-8881. Some labels sticked on the device are in handwritten Japanese. — The NEC PC-8881 8-inch floppy disk drive. This is a device from the 80's era of computing. Photo: htomari on Flickr. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.

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The floppy disk drive (FDD) was invented at IBM by Alan Shugart in 1967.
Gary Brown "How Floppy Disk Drives Work" 26 February 2001 [https://computer.howstuffworks.com/floppy-disk-drive.htm] (accessed 2025-01-11)

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