A floppy disk, diskette, or floppy diskette is a type of disk storage made from a thin, flexible disk coated with a magnetic storage medium. It is enclosed in a square or nearly square plastic shell lined with …

Floppy disk, magnetic storage medium used with late 20th-century computers. It was supplanted by the increasing use of e-mail attachments and other means to transfer files from computer to computer.

Introduced by IBM in 1971 and officially a "diskette," it was nicknamed "floppy" because the first varieties were bendable. In the late 1970s, the floppy was the first personal computer storage...

IBM began selling floppy disk drives in 1971 and received US patents for the drive and floppy disk in 1972. The floppy disk made it possible to easily load software and updates onto mainframe …

Dec 2, 2025 · A floppy disk is a storage medium capable of holding electronic data, like a computer file. The floppy diskette was created in 1967 by IBM as an alternative to buying hard drives, which were …

Apr 21, 2026 · Understand how floppy disk drives shaped personal computing. From 8 inch disks to the 1.44 MB standard, see the history and mechanics of this storage legacy.

Nov 6, 2025 · The floppy diskette was the first widely adopted medium for portable data storage and transfer. Its iconic physical form became universally recognized, leading to its enduring status as the …

Jul 19, 2021 · Fifty years ago, IBM introduced the first-ever floppy disk drive, the IBM 23FD, and the first floppy disks. Floppies made punched cards obsolete, and its successors ruled software distribution …

Jul 23, 2025 · A floppy disk is a detachable, flexible magnetic storage device that may hold computer files or other electronic data. It is composed of a flexible and thin magnetic storage disk that is …

Floppy disks were an almost universal data format from the 1970s into the 1990s, used for primary data storage as well as for backup and data transfers between computers.