In 2026, floppies are mere nostalgia for most computer enthusiasts. Though from time to time we still uncover surprising niches that time and new tech have forgotten, like the San Francisco Muni Metro , in New Jersey prisons , and the German Navy .
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-24/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
Gururu I always found it satisfying to plug them into the drive. The 3.5" was far more satisfying, almost like plugging in an 8-track cassette. Regular cassettes and VHS always felt awkward, too many tangled up on me I guess. USB to me feels the worst of all. Reply
havfy 8" floppies seem like a distant memory of archaic technology. But I last remember seeing them in use in the early 1980s, saw the rise of 5.25 disks in the same decade after not having seen one before, and when 3.5 inch disks came along, it was still the same decade. By the 1990s, CD rom technology had overtaken floppies, which were no longer practical. And the first common software products to be sold on CD were in the 1980s. Incidentally, the 1980s were the last decade in which I used punch cards for programming or data. Reply
TheOtherOne 8" v 5.25" v 3.5" Floppies were one of the perfect example of size doesn't matter, it's how you use it! 😏 Reply
PEnns TheOtherOne said: 8" v 5.25" v 3.5" Floppies were one of the perfect example of size doesn't matter, it's how you use it! 😏 Yes, and the 3.5 was not, um, floppy either!! 😜 Reply
PEnns Imagine if the patent was for a 64 or even 128 gig C type USB drive instead……Windows would have needed 1 instead of 12 floppies!! Heck, all of our software libraries at the time would have been happy on just one of those babies! And it would have cost an arm, a leg and a kidney, aka The 5090 of its time!!! Reply
dazzleworth Which C/C++98 (and below) compilers can I now use to compile a console app that would fit into the biggest disk? Reply
abufrejoval havfy said: 8" floppies seem like a distant memory of archaic technology. But I last remember seeing them in use in the early 1980s, saw the rise of 5.25 disks in the same decade after not having seen one before, and when 3.5 inch disks came along, it was still the same decade. By the 1990s, CD rom technology had overtaken floppies, which were no longer practical. And the first common software products to be sold on CD were in the 1980s. Incidentally, the 1980s were the last decade in which I used punch cards for programming or data. I actually used 5 1/4" floppies long before I ever came across the 8" variants. 5 1/4" were an upgrade to a cassette player on TRS-80 machines at college in 1980 and what I used in high numbers on my Apple ] Reply
call101010 funny that rewritable Flash chips were made in 1984 and yet the industry kept using floppies and did not move to flash cartridges … Reply
bit_user dazzleworth said: Which C/C++98 (and below) compilers can I now use to compile a console app that would fit into the biggest disk? Oh, modern executables are not necessarily that big, unless you use static linking. If you really want to keep the size down, make sure to disable debug symbols and use the -Os option, to optimize for small code size. I routinely copy libraries and executables to a test machine that's sitting on the other side of a large ocean. So, I do tend to pay attention to these things. Reply
bit_user call101010 said: funny that rewritable Flash chips were made in 1984 and yet the industry kept using floppies and did not move to flash cartridges … It's a tale as old as technology, itself. When a different way of doing something comes along, it can be very difficult to displace the existing technology, because that has all of the volume, infrastructure, and industry attention. So, it tends to be cheaper and improve at a pace that keeps it ahead of competing technologies. Just look at how long it took SSDs to displace HDDs? That's another good example! Reply
Key considerations
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/the-floppy-disk-patent-was-granted-today-in-1972-when-80kb-took-up-8-inches-and-were-really-floppy#main
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