Author: Akanksha Prasad
After a long time, when Sony said good bye to the floppy disks, I realized that how easily we had forgotten about the product.
It is indeed sad, but also surprising, to hear that it took almost three decades, for Sony to decide to stop the production of the 3.5 Floppy disk. Now the storage device, which was very much with us a few years back, will be part of history and join other legacy products like Zip-drive, reels etc.
Many news reports, like PC World, BBC had already announced the death of floppy disks. A 2003, BBC report headline said R.I.P floppy disk, perhaps it was in synced with the announcement of dell to drop floppy drive from the new machines.
I completely see the long and committed relation between the duo (Sony and floppy disks) as it was among the Sony the early adoptors of this technology, along with IBM and HP.
Back in 1971 IBM introduced the industry's first flexible magnetic disk, or diskette- "floppy disk". It aimed to be widely used as a basic storage medium for small systems. Sony introduced 3.5 in disks in 1981.
Early this month, Sony announced that it would discontinue sales of the classic 3.5 inch floppy disk in Japan in 2011. This news came pretty late as many of the rivals brands had already stopped the use and production. Apple started this change as early as 1998, when it introduced the first PC without a floppy disk drive. Last year, HP too joined the league with the announcement to stop building floppy-friendly systems. Post this, the new machines no more supported the floppy drive and instead promoted the USB ports on the face.
Floppy disk was my first storage device, and with the ever-evolving technology, I soon left this companion in the cartoon boxes to befriend CDs, and now flash-drives. A floppy disk used to be the third or fourth item in my bag that I would always carry. Starting from college projects/ papers, to homeworks of computer classes, to even my first resume, this 3.5 inch shell had been a great pal.
But this is a mere assumption that floppy was already dead. A report stated that Sony sold around 12 million floppies in Japan during 2009. A forum on a similar topic brought around 5 or 6 examples where floppy was very much part of the present life. One of the members said to have three running computers, all with floppy drives installed, and about 75 or more blank disks lying around.
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