The Floppy Disk Drive is officially dead

A few days ago I wrote about how data storage has changed dramatically in the past 20 odd years. One thing I did think about then was what happens to floppy disks. I have a few stacked away but now my only computer is a laptop and hence no option to use them. I read on Yahoo, that Sony has decided to stop the production of 3.5 inch floppy disk and it has heralded the official demise of the Floppy Disk drive.

Why did Floppy Drives die?

Like all technology floppy disks got defunct. As a matter of fact it has been widely of use only as Bootable Disk in the last ten years rather than be alternatives for storage of data. Finally with the arrival of cloud computing and DVDs becoming the norm Floppies had no value as you could store more data on one single email instead of a whole floppy drive.

Where will you see floppy disk?

There are still large corporations using old systems which were created in the 1980s and they will be probably the only ones using floppy disks to boot their systems or save data. But with newer systems where someone carries a 4GB USB storage drive I cannot see any revival for the poor old floppy disk.

I think not many will miss the floppy disk drive much. I can see that the only time we’ve mentioned the use of the floppy drive has been to about how to run a Messenger from a removable storage. I will some how always associate floppies with childhood memories of playing a round of Dave on a whirring behemoth of a computer. So what are your memories of the floppy drive ? Do let me know through your comments.