Low-cost floppy drives become indispensable for word processors and PCs.įloppy disks remained a popular portable digital-storage medium for nearly 40 years. Subsequent to IBM's 1971 introduction of a floppy drive for microcode updates to their System/370, other sizes were introduced by other vendors. Work on the drive for what became the media of 'the world's first' floppy disk drive began in 1967 at a San Jose (CA) IBM facility.The project was code-named 'Minnow' and, once completed, it was 'a read-only drive that loaded factory-written microcode' (instructions) and 'software updates into mainframe computers.' The storage media was an 8 inch diskette holding 80K bytes of data.

8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disksĪ floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, readable by a floppy disk drive (FDD), and sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric which serves the purpose of keeping the data storage disk free of foreign particles such as dust.

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