Floppy disks have appeared in several physical sizes, the 5.25-inch single-sided 180 or 360-kilobyte disks being the most common on the early PCs. Now, the 5.25-inch floppies can rarely be found. The 5.25” disk was replaced first by the short-lived 720 kilobyte 3.5 inch disk, and then the current 1.44 megabyte 3.5 inch disk. Other sizes and capacities have come and gone, with only a few still currently available. One format that has had some success, and is still available, but with declining sales, being stymied by the high price of its media, is Iomega’s Zip Drive. Commonly available in 100 megabyte and 250-megabyte discs, Zip disks are about the same size as a 3.5-inch floppy, but generally not interchangeable, and can store the equivalent of about 70 to 175 floppies. A few years ago Imation released its SuperDisk drives and discs. What was attractive about SuperDisks was their capacity of 120 megabytes, plus the drives could read and write to both the SuperDisks and the conventional 3.5-inch floppy disks. Other formats of drives and floppy disks have been produced, some with capacities of up to 2.2 gigabytes on a 3.5-inch disk, or roughly the equivalent of 1600 conventional floppy disks.

One problem with the large capacity Zip and SuperDisks was the price of the media. Even though they had a capacity greatly superior to that of a conventional floppy, and their cost per megabyte of capacity was competitive, the cost per disc and the cost of the drives was what made them unpopular. Also leading to the decline in popularity of these alternative drives has been the near universal availability of good quality and inexpensive CD-RW drives along with the CD-RW and CD-R media. Typically holding 660 to 700 megabytes of data, and with discs sometimes being “free after rebates”, many sellers have almost stopped selling traditional floppy disks, and their big brother Zip And SuperDisks.

A quick analysis of older computer magazines revealed that the DVD drives and media are now priced where CD drives and media were only about three to four years ago. DVD drives and media are becoming more commonplace in the market as well as commonly installed into many new computers. Just as CD players showed up in computers before CD-RW drives, DVD players are commonly appearing installed in new computers, with the DVD writers now becoming common. As the prices of DVD drives and media are expected to continue to drop, many pundits are expecting that in the next few years that DVDs will do to CD sales the same as the CD did to the floppy – render it functionally obsolete. With a 4.7-gigabyte capacity, equivalent to about seven CDs, sales of DVD drives and media are expected to soar. Double sided DVD discs, called “DVD-RAM”, and having a 9.4 gigabyte capacity, double that of the single-sided 4.7 gigabyte discs, are becoming popular, but can only be played on compatible computer based DVD drives. Unlike the near universally standardized format used on PC compatible floppies and CDs, there are competing standards for DVD drives. Strong camps have formed promoting the competing “DVD+” format and the “DVD -“ format. Both formats are almost equally capable at storing data, and playing movies in recent players, only a few models of drives are capable of utilizing both formats interchangeably, and even fewer can utilize the higher capacity DVD-RAM discs.

Another contender for portable data storage appeared over the past few months, and is now becoming very popular as its cost plunges. Now that Dell no longer installs floppy drives on new computers unless the buyer explicitly orders one, Dell now includes one of these drives as standard on many models. The drive has many catchy brand names, but is generically called a USB “Thumb” drive. About two inches long, and about three-quarters of an inch wide, by about a quarter-inch thick, and weighing less then an ounce, these drives are becoming widely available. Not requiring a separate drive to read or write to them, they simply plug into the USB port of any computer with a functional USB socket, and are interchangeable between PCs and Macs. Containing no moving parts, these drives will run on most operating systems. Windows NT does not typically support USB, even if the computer has USB sockets. Most Macs, and all computers with Windows ME, 2000, and XP generally do not require any drivers; the device simply plugs in and it appears as a hard drive. Windows 98 may require the installation of a driver. Simply remove the device (some require that an icon be clicked to unplug the device) and plug it into another compatible computer and the data is instantly available. These drives are very fast, capable of speeds of 12 to 400 megabytes per second. Currently commonly available in 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and 512 megabyte capacities, and now becoming available in 1 and 2 gigabyte capacities. Locally the 64 and 128 megabyte capacities are available for as little as $29 and $49, after rebates, which is about half of what they sold for a few months ago. Prices are expected to drop as availability increases.

Farewell to my old friend, the floppy disc. Hello to my new friends, DVD and “thumb” drives.

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