When was the last time you saw a 3.5” floppy disk? If this image triggers your memories, that means you are over twenty for sure! Welcome to the reality of responsibilities. Sadly, Uncle Ben is a fiction character and no we don’t have great power.
Why discussing about 3.5” floppy disk all the sudden?
I saw this.
That is right! It’s a wall full of 3.5” floppy disks! Look carefully and you can see how much effort the companies put into designing the outfit of the disks!
I was amazed and astonished when I saw the wall. It was fairly impressive. So, I asked the owner if I could have an interview. The owner kindly rejected. Nonetheless, I just thought of it as an interesting wall to flash some memories back.
For those who do not know much about the floppy disks, they are disk storage media used to as portable storage. Floppy disks were commonly used from 1970s until 2003. As USB flash drives were invented in 1999, the purposes of floppy disks were replaced by USB. Until now, it is very rare to see anyone using floppy disks. Not even mentioning none of the modern computer models include floppy disk drives anymore.
With my 2GB USB key, I have forgotten how important the floppy disks were about ten years ago. I could save my Pokemon games on a floppy disk and carry it around everywhere. Man, that 1.44MB was an enormous size for us. I could never really use up all the memories on the disks. Pictures had lower resolutions and thus smaller sizes. It was fairly easy to store almost a hundred pictures on 1.44 MB. That was until high definition pictures came out. Every disk could only carry two pictures max. Guess that’s one of the main reasons for the floppy disks replaced by the flash drive.
Even the computer games were carried with multiple floppy disks. It depended on how big the game was, but normally, it came in with at least 4 floppy disks for a complete game. We had to switch disks after achieving certain stages. So, theoretically, it was possible for four friends playing the same game with different stages of the game. Guess that will not happen as often now, perhaps never again!
Another interesting fact, if you pay close attention to some software, such as Microsoft Word, their “save” icon is actually a floppy disk. Although the disks may not be physically presence, they are still with us in the electronic world!
Now, what are your interesting stories about floppy disks?
Solomon's Mind 