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Data Storage Hardware

The History of the Floppy Disk 204

Esther Schindler writes "Ready for a nostalgic trip into the wayback? We had floppy disks long before we had CDs, DVDs, or USB thumb-drives. Here's the evolution of the portable media that changed everything about personal computing. 'The 8-inch drive began to show up in 1971. Since they enabled developers and users to stop using the dreaded paper tape (which were easy to fold, spindle, and mutilate, not to mention to pirate) and the loathed IBM 5081 punch card. Everyone who had ever twisted a some tape or—the horror!—dropped a deck of Hollerith cards was happy to adopt 8-inch drives. Besides, the early single-sided 8-inch floppy could hold the data of up to 3,000 punch cards, or 80K to you.'"
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The History of the Floppy Disk

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  • Re:Read Error (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mspohr ( 589790 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2012 @12:18PM (#41168213)

    That was the most frustrating part of Netware... besides the large number of disks, you had to put some disks in several times and switch them back and forth. They also stayed with single density disks when the double density disk drives were widely available so the number of disks was twice as many as necessary.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

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