With today’s hard drives packing terabytes of storage and even the flimsiest internet connections delivering transfer speeds of 30 megabytes per second, it’s baffling to think that the sturdy floppy disk, with its mere megabytes of capacity, was once the default medium for the exchange of digital information.
For decades, these rectangular hardware units symbolised computing. Now, their legacy is a literal symbol – the ‘save’ icon appearing on our software toolbars. And although they’re still popular among vintage computer hobbyists, the once-ubiquitous diskettes are increasingly difficult to find. Accordingly, most young people have no idea what they are.
But the technology is not totally obsolete. Factory and healthcare equipment, planes, trains and air-traffic control systems built in the 1990s often still rely on floppy disks for important system updates.
Floppy-disk holdouts
Tom Persky, the self-proclaimed ‘last man standing in the floppy disk business’, recycles and sells diskettes on floppydisk.com. “Industrial machines are built to last for 50 years,” he says. “If you bought one in 1990 you’re still in the sweet spot of longevity. Maybe a third of the airplanes flying today were built more than 20 years ago. To get information in and out of the avionics, you have to use a floppy disk.”
But the supply of floppy disks is dwindling and it’s unlikely that any more units will be manufactured. Sony, one of the biggest producers of the diskettes, stopped making floppies in 2011. And, all of the companies that produced the magnetic strips encased in the disks – the part that stores information – have ceased operations. “Nobody has made them since,” says Persky. “I’m not sure anybody knows how to make them. The tooling and equipment are gone.”
If you ask me for 100,000 disks today, I don’t have them and I don’t know where to get them. I know they’re out there, but I don’t know where they are
With tongue in cheek, Persky compares himself to the Christian monks who would either wash or scrape the ink off of Greek parchment and write Bible verses on the cleaned pages. “That’s what I’m doing today,” he says.
Persky, who used to be in the software-development business, occasionally feels sentimental about wiping old data. Sometimes he receives a floppy disk containing software that he wrote – but “time marches on,” he adds.
Although there are floppy disks still in circulation, it’s difficult to locate them. “If you ask me for 100,000 disks today, I don’t have them and I don’t know where to get them,” Persky says. “I know they’re out there, but I don’t know where they are.”
So the global supply of floppy disks is fading, the existing disks are eroding and the skills required to make them are disappearing from the market. For the few industries that still rely on the increasingly precarious legacy tech, the race to ditch the floppy disk is on.
Systems in need of upgrades
Modern software no longer supports floppy disks in any meaningful way. The computer operating system Linux stopped supporting floppy disks in 2019. Emulators and USB-powered floppy drives, however, are still available.
The Japanese government only recently stopped using floppies. Japanese legislation required that the disks be used for certain administrative tasks before being amended last year. Taro Kono, Japan’s digital minister, finally declared victory in the two-year “war on floppy disks” in June 2024.
Air traffic controllers are working with equipment that is decades old
Some organisations in the US are still using floppies, too. Thomas Black, a Bloomberg columnist, blamed a recent blackout at the Newark airport on the use of ageing infrastructure, including floppy disks, by air traffic controllers. He called on Sean Duffy, the US transport secretary, to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control systems.
“Air traffic controllers are working with equipment that is decades old,” Black wrote. “Some of the systems are so dated that they still use floppy disks – spare parts are difficult to find and there’s a risk of losing the long-time technicians, who are the only ones who know how to repair such antiquated equipment.”
Meanwhile, the control system for San Francisco’s light rail network, the Muni Metro, is also due a refresh. Installed in 1998, the system still relies on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies for DOS-based server upgrades. The network has started a digitalisation effort to the tune of $200m (£151m). Although the floppy-based system still functions, the skills required to operate it are vanishing from the labour force.
Floppies fall victim to degradation
Floppy disks were not designed to last multiple decades. Many were manufactured with a shelf life of only five to 10 years. “That’s not a lot of time, is it?” asks Leontien Talboom, a technical analyst for the digital-preservation team at the University of Cambridge. “But they have lasted a lot longer. We’ve got floppy disks in our collection that are getting close to 50 years old and they’re fine.”
However, because of the potential for degradation, particularly if the disks are not kept in ideal temperatures or conditions, archivists must work quickly to preserve the data on them. “They were produced as cheaply as possible and preservation wasn’t on the manufacturers’ minds,” says Talboom. She’s on a quest to preserve the material stored on floppy disks before they deteriorate and their data is lost.
Projects such as Talboom’s are important for the maintenance and continued operation of old, but essential, systems. Documentation for vintage machines is often stored on legacy hardware, such as the floppy disks, at risk of becoming obsolete. And, soon, few workers will have experience using such systems, as those most familiar with the technologies retire or die.
A lack of standardisation further complicates matters. Talboom explains: “The machines weren’t standardised until IBM got the largest market share. It was the Wild West. If your friend had an Amiga machine and you had something else, good luck trying to share that data.”
A state of flux
To retrieve material from floppy disks, archivists create a digital copy – called a flux stream – of the information on the magnetic tape inside the disk’s hard-plastic casing. But, to access the files from that flux stream, archivists need to know how that specific floppy-disk image was formatted in the first place.
This is not much of a problem for the once-dominant IBM disks of yore, but it is trickier for the many other competing diskettes or outdated file formats, such as those used by the Lexitron word processor or research machines from companies such as Wang Computers.
“If you’ve got a book in the library, you can put it on a shelf somewhere and because everything is kept in a stable environment, if you return in 20, 50 or even 100 years, you can still pick up the book and do whatever you want with it,” says Talboom. “But with digital devices, there are so many dependencies. Depending on the file format, you need to be able to keep the accompanying software safe – sometimes even the very niche operating system that runs that software.”
As for Persky, he’s planning to get out of the floppy game soon. “I’m 75,” he says. “At this point, it’s almost a hobby. But I will be out of stock in the next 24 to 36 months.” For the factories and flights that still rely on floppy disks, time’s running out to make those long-overdue upgrades.
With today's hard drives packing terabytes of storage and even the flimsiest internet connections delivering transfer speeds of 30 megabytes per second, it’s baffling to think that the sturdy floppy disk, with its mere megabytes of capacity, was once the default medium for the exchange of digital information.
For decades, these rectangular hardware units symbolised computing. Now, their legacy is a literal symbol – the ‘save’ icon appearing on our software toolbars. And although they're still popular among vintage computer hobbyists, the once-ubiquitous diskettes are increasingly difficult to find. Accordingly, most young people have no idea what they are.
But the technology is not totally obsolete. Factory and healthcare equipment, planes, trains and air-traffic control systems built in the 1990s often still rely on floppy disks for important system updates.
