The Not Quite Obsolete Floppy Disk

I had a computer with SCSI for a long time after SCSI was standard computer issue. I had a much loved (and, at the time, very expensive) scanner that connected to my computer using SCSI. And a lot of my old backups were on Zip disks that I could only access using my SCSI Zip drive. When I finally retired my last computer with SCSI, I donated my old Zip disks to someone I found on Freecycle who nostalgically still used them. The Zip drive, which had been acting erratically for a long time, went into the trash along with the scanner (sadly no one on Freecycle wanted the scanner).

Before there were Zip disks there were floppies. I don’t remember ever using the original, huge 8-inch floppies (you know, the ones that were actually floppy), but I do remember the 5-¼-inch version from my early days at Commodore. And I remember the first time someone at Commodore showed us an awfully cute, little 3-½-inch disk that held an incredible 720 KB of data. Then along came a version that held (gasp) 1.44 MB. So much storage in the palm of your hand. It was just amazing.

That was a long time ago and it has been a long time since I have had a computer with a floppy drive. So you wouldn’t think anyone out there would still want or use a floppy disk. (Except, of course, the US nuclear program that still uses ancient 8-inch floppies as reported on CNN.) But, apparently, people still do like and use floppies. According to this video that I found on CNN, there is still a market for floppies and you can buy them at FloppyDisk.com. Now if I could have only found a home for my old scanner.