History of the floppy disk

A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible
magnetic storage medium encased in a rectangular plastic carrier. It is read and
written using a floppy disk drive (FDD). Floppy disks were an almost universal data
format from the late 1970s into the 1990s, used at first as a primary data storage
mechanism, and later mostly as a file transfer system as part of what became known
as "sneakernet".
8-inch, 51⁄4-inch, and 31⁄2-inch floppy
Work on a drive that led to the world's first floppy disk and disk drive began in 1967 disks
at a San Jose (CA) IBM facility,[1] and introduced into the market in an 8-inch
format in 1972. The more conveniently sized 51⁄4-inch disks were introduced in
1976, and became almost universal on dedicated word processing systems and personal computers.[2] This format was more slowly
replaced by the 31⁄2-inch format, first introduced in 1982. There was a significant period where both were popular.[3] A number of
other variant sizes were introduced over time, with limited market success.

Floppy disks remained a popular medium for nearly 40 years, but their use was declining by the mid-1990s.[4][5] The introduction of
high speed computer networking and new formats like the USB thumbdrive led to the eventual disappearance of the floppy disk as a
standard feature of microcomputers, with a notable point in this conversion being the introduction of the floppy-less iMac in 1998.
After 2000, floppy disks were increasingly rare and used primarily with older hardware and especially with legacy industrial
computer equipment.

Contents
The 8-inch disk
The 5 1⁄4-inch minifloppy
The "Twiggy" disk
The 3-inch compact floppy disk
Mitsumi's "Quick Disk" 3-inch floppies

3 1⁄2-inch format
Evolution
See also
Notes
References

The 8-inch disk

In 1967, IBM tasked their San Jose, California development laboratory to develop a reliable and inexpensive system for loading
microcode into their System/370 mainframes in a process called Initial Control Program Load (ICPL).[6] The System/370 was IBM's
first computer system family to make extensive usage of volatile read/write semiconductor memory for microcode,[nb 1] so for most
models, whenever[nb 2] the power was turned on, the microcode had to be loaded (System/370's predecessor, System/360, generally
used non-volatile read-only memory for microcode). IBM also wanted inexpensive media that could be sent out to customers with
software updates.[7]
IBM Direct Access Storage Product Manager, Alan Shugart, assigned the job to David
L. Noble,[8] who tried to develop a new-style tape for the purpose, but without success.
The project was reassigned to Donald L. Wartner, 23FD Disk Drive manager, and
Herbert E. Thompson, 23FD Disk manager, along with design engineers Warren L.
Dalziel, Jay Brent Nilson, and Ralph Flores; and that team developed the IBM 23FD
Floppy Disk Drive System (code name Minnow). The disk is a read-only, 8-inch-
diameter (200 mm) flexible diskette called the "memory disk" and holding 80 kilobytes
of data. Initially the disk was bare, but dirt became a serious problem so they enclosed it
in a plastic envelope lined with fabric that would remove dust particles.[9] The Floppy
Disk Patent #3,668,658[10] was issued on June 6, 1972 with named inventors Ralph Drawings from IBM Floppy Disk
Flores and Herbert E. Thompson. The Floppy Disk Drive Patent #3,678,481[11] was Drive Patents
issued July 18, 1972 with named inventors Warren L. Dalziel, Jay. B. Nilson, and
Donald L. Wartner. IBM introduced the diskette commercially in 1971.[12][nb 3]

The new device first shipped in 1971 as the 23FD, the program load component of the 2835 Storage Control Unit.[13] and then as a
standard part of most System 370 processing units and other IBM products. Internally IBM used another device, code named
Mackerel, to write boot disks for distribution to the field.[9]

Alan Shugart left IBM and moved to Memorex where his team shipped the Memorex 650 in 1972, the first commercially available
read-write floppy disk drive. The 650 had a data capacity of 175 kB, with 50 tracks, 8 sectors per track, and 448 bytes per sector. The
Memorex disk was "hard-sectored", that is, it contained 8 sector holes (plus one index hole) at the outer diameter (outside data track
00) to synchronize the beginning of each data sector and the beginning of a track.

3740 Data Entry System,[14] code named

In 1973, IBM shipped its first read/write floppy disk drive, the 33FD, as a component of the
"IGAR",[9] designed to directly replace IBM's punched card ("keypunch") data entry machines. A significant feature of IBM's
read/write disk media was the use of a Teflon-lubricated fabric liner to lengthen media life. In 1976, media supplier Information
Terminals Corporation enhanced resilience further by adding a Teflon coating to the magnetic disk itself.[15] The new system used a
different recording format that stored up to 2501⁄4 kB on the same disks. Drives supporting this format were offered by a number of
manufacturers and soon became common for moving smaller amounts of data. This disk format became known as the Single Sided
Single Density or SSSD format. It was designed to hold just as much data as one box of 2000 punch cards. The disk was divided into
77 tracks of 26 sectors (a total of 2002 sectors), each holding 128 bytes.

When the first microcomputers were being developed in the 1970s, the 8-inch floppy
found a place on them as one of the few "high speed, mass storage" devices that
were even remotely affordable to the target market (individuals and small
businesses). The first microcomputer operating system, CP/M, originally shipped on
8-inch disks. However, the drives were still expensive, typically costing more than
the computer they were attached to in early days, so most machines of the era used
cassette tape instead.

Also in 1973, Shugart founded Shugart Associates which went on to become the
dominant manufacturer of 8-inch floppy disk drives. Its SA800 became the industry
( 1⁄2-
8-inch disk drive with diskette 3
standard for form factor and interface.
inch disk for comparison)
In 1976, IBM introduced the 500 KB Double Sided Single Density (DSSD) format,
and in 1977 IBM introduced the 1–1.2 MB Double Sided Double Density (DSDD)
format.[16]

The 8" floppy standard as developed by Shugart involved a 50-pin interface and a spindle motor that ran directly from the A/C line
and spun constantly. This was because having to stop and start the motor every time the disk was accessed would slow things down
due to the time needed to spin up the large 8" diskettes.
Most 8" disks were hard-sectored, meaning that they had a fixed number of disk sectors (usually 8, 16, or 32), marked by physical
holes punched around the disk hub, and the drive required the correct media type for its controller
.

Other 8-inch floppy disk formats such as the Burroughs 1 MB unit failed to achieve any market presence.

The 51⁄4-inch minifloppy

In a 1976 meeting, An Wang of Wang Laboratories informed Jim Adkisson and Don
Massaro of Shugart Associates that the 8-inch format was simply too large and
expensive for the desktop word processing machines he was developing at the time. He
argued for a $100 drive.

According to Massaro, Adkisson proposed a smaller size and began working with
cardboard mockups before the Wang meeting. George Sollman suggests the size was the
average of existing tape drives of the era.[17] It is an urban legend that the physical size
came about when they met with Wang at a bar in Boston; when he was asked what size A double-density 51⁄4-inch
would be appropriate, Wang pointed to a cocktail napkin[18] - there was no such (133 mm) disk with a partly
exposed magnetic medium spun
meeting.[17]
about a central hub. The cover
has a cloth liner to brush dust
The new drive of this size stored 98.5 KB, later increased to 110 KB by adding five
from the medium. Note the “write-
tracks.[17][19] The 51⁄4-inch (133 mm) drive was considerably less expensive than 8-inch
enable slot” to the upper right and
drives, and soon started appearing onCP/M machines. the hole next to the hub that gives
access to the index hole in the
Shugart's initial 5.25" drive was the 35-track, single-sided SA-400, which was widely
disk.
used in many early microcomputers, and which introduced the 34-pin interface that
would become an industry standard. It could be used with either a hard or soft-sectored
controller and storage capacity was listed as 90k (single density) or13k
1 (double density). The drive went on sale in late 1976 at a list
price of $400, and $60 for a box of ten disks. The new
, smaller disk format was taken up quickly,and by 1978 there were ten different
manufacturers producing 5.25" drives. At one point, Shugart was turning out 4000 drives a day, but their ascendancy was short-lived
and the company's fortunes declined in the early 1980s. Part of this was their failure to develop a reliable 80-track drive, increasing
competition, and the loss of several lucrative contracts--Apple by 1982 had switched to using cheaper Alps drive mechanisms in their
computers, and IBM chose Tandon as their sole supplier of disk drives for the PC. By 1983, they had been purchased by Xerox, who
discontinued the Shugart name a few years later
.

Apple purchased bare SA-400 drive mechanisms for their Disk II drive, which was then equipped with a custom Apple controller
board and the faceplate stamped with the Apple logo. Steve Wozniak developed a recording scheme known as Group Code Record
which allowed 140k of storage, well above the standard 90–113k, although the price of double density controllers fell not long after
the Disk II's introduction. GCR recording used software means of detecting the track and sector being accessed, hence there was no
need of hard sectored disks or even the index hole.

Commodore also elected to use GCR recording (although a different variation not compatible with Apple's format) in their disk drive
line. Tandy however used industry-standard FM on the TRS-80's disk drives, with stock Shugart SA-400s, and so had a mere 85k of
storage.

These early drives read only one side of the disk, leading to the popular budget approach of cutting a second write-enable slot and
index hole into the carrier envelope and flipping it over (thus, the “flippy disk”) to use the other side for additional storage. This was
considered risky by some, for the reason that single sided disks would only be certified by the manufacturer for single sided use. The
reasoning was that, when flipped, the disk would spin in the opposite direction inside its cover, so some of the dirt that had been
[20][21][22]
collected by the fabric lining in the previous rotations would be picked up by the disk and dragged past the read/write head.

Although hard sectored disks were commonplace on 8" drives, they were never widely used in 5.25" form, although North Star clung
to the format until their bankruptcy in 1984.
Tandon introduced a double-sided drive in 1978, doubling the capacity, and a new “double density” format increased it again, to
360 KB.[nb 4]

By 1979, there were also 77-track 5.25" drives available, mostly used in CP/M and other professional computers, and also found in
some of Commodore's disk drive line.

By the early 1980s, falling prices of computer hardware and technological advances led to the near-universal adoption of soft-sector,
double density disk formats. In addition, more compact half-height disk drives began to appear, as well as double-sided drives,
although the cost of them meant that single-sided remained the standard for most home computers, and 80-track drives known as
"quad density".

For most of the 1970s and 1980s, the floppy drive was the primary storage device for word processors and microcomputers. Since
these machines had no hard drive, theOS was usually booted from one floppy disk, which was then removed and replaced by another
one containing the application. Some machines using two disk drives (or one dual drive) allowed the user to leave the OS disk in
place and simply change the application disks as needed, or to copy data from one floppy to another. In the early 1980s, “quad
density” 96-track-per-inch drives appeared, increasing the capacity to 720 KB. RX50[23] was another proprietary format, used by
Digital Equipment Corporation's Rainbow-100, DECmate-II, and Pro-350. It held 400 KB[nb 5] on a single side by using 96 tracks
per inch and cramming 10 sectors per track.

Floppy disks were supported on IBM's PC DOS and Microsoft's MS-DOS from their
beginning on the original IBM PC. With version 1.0 of PC DOS (1981), only single-
sided 160 KB floppies were supported. Version 1.1 the next year saw support expand to
double-sided 320 KB disks. Finally, in 1983, DOS 2.0 supported 9 sectors per track
rather than 8, providing 180 KB on a (formatted) single-sided disk and 360 KB on a
double-sided.[24]

In 1984, IBM introduced the 5.25" high density disk format with its new IBM AT
machines. The 5.25" HD drive was essentially a scaled-down 8" drive, using the same
rotation speed and bit rate, and it provided almost three times as much storage as the
360k format, but had compatibility issues with the older drives due to the narrower
White 51⁄4-inch floppy disk.
read/write head.

Except for labeling, 51⁄4-inch high-density disks were externally identical to their
double-density counterparts. This led to an odd situation wherein the drive itself was unable to determine the density of the disk
inserted except by reading the disk media to determine the format. It was therefore possible to use a high-density drive to format a
double-density disk to the higher capacity. This usually appeared to work (sometimes reporting a small number of bad sectors)—at
least for a time. The problem was that the high-density format was made possible by the creation of a new high-coercivity oxide
coating (after soft-sector formatting became standard, previous increases in density were largely enabled by improvements in head
technology; up until that point, the media formulation had essentially remained the same since 1976). In order to format or write to
this high-coercivity media, the high-density drive switched its heads into a mode using a stronger magnetic field. When these
stronger fields were written onto a double-density disk (having lower coercivity media), the strongly magnetized oxide particles
would begin to affect the magnetic charge of adjacent particles. The net effect is that the disk would begin to erase itself. On the other
hand, the opposite procedure (attempting to format an HD disk as DD) would fail almost every time, as the high-coercivity media
would not retain data written by the low-power DD field. High-density 31⁄2-inch disks avoided this problem by the addition of a hole
in the disk cartridge so that the drive could determine the appropriate density. However, the coercivity rating between the 31⁄2-inch
DD and HD formats, 665 and 720 oersteds, is much narrower than that for the 51⁄4-inch format, 600 versus 300 oersteds,[25] and
consequently it was possible to format a31⁄2-inch DD disk as HD with no apparent problems.

By the end of the 1980s, the 51⁄4-inch disks had been superseded by the 31⁄2-inch disks. Though 51⁄4-inch drives were still available,
as were disks, they faded in popularity as the 1990s began. The main community of users was primarily those who still owned 1980s
legacy machines (PCs running DOS or home computers) that had no 31⁄2-inch drive; the advent of Windows 95 (not even sold in
stores in a 51⁄4-inch version; a coupon had to be obtained and mailed in) and subsequent phaseout of stand-alone MS-DOS with
version 6.22 forced many of them to upgrade their hardware. On most new computers, the 51⁄4-inch drives were optional equipment.
By the mid-1990s, the drives had virtually disappeared as the31⁄2-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk.

The "Twiggy" disk

During the development of the Apple Lisa, Apple developed a disk format codenamed Twiggy,
and officially known as FileWare. While basically similar to a standard 51⁄4-inch disk, the Twiggy
disk had an additional set of write windows on the top of the disk with the label running down the
side. The drive was also present in prototypes of the original Apple Macintosh computer, but was
removed in both the Mac and later versions of the Lisa in favor of the 31⁄2-inch floppy disk from
Sony. The drives were notoriously unreliable and Apple was criticized for needlessly diverging
from industry standards.[26]

FileWare diskette
The 3-inch compact floppy disk
Throughout the early 1980s, the limitations of the 51⁄4-inch format were starting to become clear.
Originally designed to be smaller and more practical than the 8-inch format, the 51⁄4-inch system was itself too large, and as the
quality of the recording media grew, the same amount of data could be placed on a smaller surface. Another problem was that the
51⁄4-inch disks were simply scaled down versions of the 8-inch disks, which had never really been engineered for ease of use. The
thin folded-plastic shell allowed the disk to be easily damaged through bending, and allowed dirt to get onto the disk surface through
the opening.

A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2-inch, 21⁄2-inch, 3-inch and
31⁄2-inch (50, 60, 75 and 90 mm), all being offered by various companies. They all
shared a number of advantages over the older format, including a small form factor
and a rigid case with a slideable write protect catch. The almost-universal use of the
51⁄4-inch format made it very difficult for any of these new formats to gain any
significant market share. Some of these formats included Dysan and Shugart's 31⁄4-
inch floppy disk, the later ubiquitous Sony31⁄2-inch disk and the 3-inch format:

the 3-inch BRG MCD-1 developed in 1973 by Marcell Jánosi, a

Hungarian inventor of Budapest Radiotechnic Company (Budapesti
Rádiótechnikai Gyár — BRG).[27]
the AmDisk-3 Micro-Floppy-disk cartridge system in December
1982,[28][29] which was originally designed for use with theApple II Disk A 31⁄4-inch floppy disk.
II interface card[29]
the Mitsumi Quick Disk 3-inch floppies.
The 3-inch floppy drive itself was manufactured byHitachi, Matsushita and Maxell.[30] Only Teac outside this "network" is known to
have produced drives. Similarly, only three manufacturers of media (Maxell, Matsushita and Tatung) are known (sometimes also
branded Yamaha, Amsoft, Panasonic, Tandy, Godexco and Dixons), but "no-name" disks with questionable quality have been seen in
circulation.

Amstrad included a 3-inch single-sided, double-density (180 KB) drive in their CPC and some models of PCW. The PCW 8512
included a double-sided, quad-density (720 KB) drive as the second drive, and later models, such as the PCW 9512, used quad-
density even for the first drive. The single-sided double density (180 KB) drive was "inherited" by the ZX Spectrum +3 computer
after Amstrad bought the rights from Sinclair. The Oric-1 and Atmos systems from Oric International also used the 3-inch floppy
drives, originally shipping with the Atmos, but also supported on the older Oric-1.

Since all 3-inch media were double-sided in nature, single-sided drive owners were able to flip the disk over to use the other side.
The sides were termed "A" and "B" and were completely independent, but single-sided drive units could only access the upper side at
one time.
The disk format itself had no more capacity than the more popular (and cheaper)
51⁄4-inch floppies. Each side of a double-density disk held 180 KB for a total of
360 KB per disk, and 720 KB for quad-density disks.[31] Unlike 51⁄4-inch or 31⁄2-
inch disks, the 3-inch disks were designed to be reversible and sported two
independent write-protect switches. It was also more reliable thanks to its hard
casing.

3-inch drives were also used on a number of exotic and obscure CP/M systems such
as the Tatung Einstein and occasionally on MSX systems in some regions. Other
computers to have used this format are the more unknownGavilan Mobile Computer
and Matsushita's National Mybrain 3000. The Yamaha MDR-1 also used 3-inch
drives.

The main problems with this format were the high price, due to the quite elaborate
and complex case mechanisms. However, the tip on the weight was when Sony in
The CF has a harder casing than a
1984 convinced Apple Computer to use the 31⁄2-inch drives in the Macintosh 128K
31⁄2-inch floppy; the metal door is
model, effectively making the 31⁄2-inch drive a de-facto standard. opened by a sliding plastic tab on the
right side.

Mitsumi's "Quick Disk" 3-inch floppies

Another 3-inch (75 mm) format was Mitsumi's Quick Disk format. The Quick Disk
format is referred to in various size references: 2.8-inch, 3-inch×3-inch and 3-
inch×4-inch. Mitsumi offered this as OEM equipment, expecting their VAR
customers to customize the packaging for their own particular use; disks thus vary in
storage capacity and casing size. The Quick Disk uses a 2.8-inch magnetic media,
break-off write-protection tabs (one for each side), and contains a see-through hole
near center spindle (used to ensure spindle clamping). Nintendo packaged the 2.8-
inch magnetic media in a 3-inch×4-inch housing, while others packaged the same
media in a 3 inch×3 inch square housing.

The Quick Disk's most successful use was in Nintendo's Famicom Disk System
(FDS). The FDS package of Mitsumi's Quick Disk used a 3-inch×4-inch plastic
housing called the "Disk System Card". Most FDS disks did not have cover
protection to prevent media contamination, but a later special series of five games Quick Disk for Family Computer Disk
did include a protective shutter.[32] System

Mitsumi's "3-inch" Quick Disk media were also used in a 3-inch×3-inch housing for
many Smith Corona word processors. The Smith Corona disks are confusingly
labeled "DataDisk 2.8-inch", presumably referring to the size of the medium inside
the hard plastic case.

The Quick Disk was also used in several MIDI keyboards and MIDI samplers of the
mid-1980s. A non-inclusive list includes: the Roland S-10[33] and MKS100
samplers, the Korg SQD1, the Korg SQD8[34] MIDI sequencer, Akai's 1985 model
MD280 drive for the S-612 MIDI sampler,[35][36][37] Akai's X7000 / S700 (rack
version)[38] and X3700,[39] the Roland S-220,[40][41] and the Yamaha MDF1[42]
A Smith Corona DataDisk 2.8-inch.
MIDI disk drive (intended for their DX7/21/100/TX7 synthesizers, RX11/21/21L
drum machines, and QX1, QX21 and QX5 MIDI sequencers).

As the cost in the 1980s to add 51⁄4-inch drives was still quite high, the Mitsumi Quick Disk was competing as a lower cost
[43]
alternative packaged in several now obscure 8-bit computer systems. Another non-inclusive list of Quick Disk versions: QDM-01,
QDD (Quick Disk Drive) on French Thomson micro-computers, in the Casio QD-7 drive,[44] in a peripheral for the Sharp MZ-700 &
MZ-800 system,[45] in the DPQ-280 Quickdisk for the Daewoo/Dynadata MSX1 DPC-200,[46][47] in the Dragon 32/64 machine,[48]
in the Crescent Quick Disk 128, 128i and 256 peripherals for the ZX Spectrum,[49] and in the Triton Quick Disk peripheral also for
the ZX Spectrum.[49][50]

The World of Spectrum FAQ[51] reveals that the drives did come in different sizes: 128 to 256 kB in Crescent's incarnation, and in
the Triton system, with a density of 4410 bits per inch, data transmission rate of 101.6 kbit/s, a 2.8-inch double sided disk type and a
capacity of up to 20 sectors per side at 2.5 kB per sector, up to 100 kB per disk. Quick Disk as used in the Famicom Disk System
holds 64 kB of data per side, requiring a manual turn-over to access the second side.

Unusually, the Quick Disk utilizes "a continuous linear tracking of the head and thus creates a single spiral track along the disk
similar to a record groove."[50] This has led some to compare it more to a "tape-stream" unit than typically what is thought of as a
random-access disk drive.[52]

31⁄2-inch format
In 1981, Sony introduced their 31⁄2-inch floppy disk cartridge (90.0 mm × 94.0 mm) having a
single sided unformatted capacity of 218.8 KB and a formatted capacity of 161.2 KB. A
double sided version was available in 1982. This initial Sony design was similar to other less
than 51⁄4-inch designs but somewhat simpler in construction. The first computer to use this
format was Sony's SMC 70[53] of 1982. Other than Hewlett-Packard's HP-150 of 1983 and
Sony's MSX computers that year, this format suffered from a similar fate as the other new
formats; the 51⁄4-inch format simply had too much market share.
Close-up of 31⁄2-inch disk
Things changed dramatically in 1982 when the Microfloppy Industry Committee (MIC), a
consortium ultimately of 23 media companies, agreed upon a 31⁄2-inch media specification
based upon but differing from the original Sony design.[54] The first single-sided drives
compatible with this new media specification shipped in early 1983,[55] followed immediately
in 1984 by double-sided compatible versions.[56] In 1984, Apple Computer selected the
format for their new Macintosh computers.[57] Then, in 1985, Atari adopted it for their new
ST line, and Commodore for their new Amiga. By 1988, the 31⁄2-inch was outselling the 51⁄4-
inch.[58] In South Africa, the 31⁄2-inch format was generally called a stiffy disk, to distinguish
it from the flexible 5½-inch format.[59][60]

The term "31⁄2-inch" or "3.5-inch" disk is and was rounded from the 90 mm actual dimension
of one side of the rectangular cartridge. The actual disk diameter is 85.8 millimetres (3.38 in). Standard 31⁄2-inch disk with
a blank label
The 31⁄2-inch disks had, by way of their rigid case's slide-in-place metal cover, the significant
advantage of being much better protected against unintended physical contact with the disk
surface than 51⁄4-inch disks when the disk was handled outside the disk drive. When the disk was inserted, a part inside the drive
moved the metal cover aside, giving the drive's read/write heads the necessary access to the magnetic recording surfaces. Adding the
slide mechanism resulted in a slight departure from the previous square outline. The irregular, rectangular shape had the additional
merit that it made it impossible to insert the disk sideways by mistake as had indeed been possible with earlier formats.

3.5" drives included several other advantages over the older drive types, including not requiring a terminating resistor pack, and no
need of an index hole.

The shutter mechanism was not without its problems, however. On old or roughly treated disks, the shutter could bend away from the
disk. This made it vulnerable to being ripped off completely (which does not damage the disk itself but does leave it much more
vulnerable to dust), or worse, catching inside a drive and possibly either getting stuck inside or damaging the drive.

Evolution
Like the 51⁄4-inch, the 31⁄2-inch disk underwent an evolution of its own. When Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984, it used
single-sided 31⁄2-inch disk drives with an advertised capacity of 400 kB. The encoding technique used by these drives was known as
GCR, or Group Coded Recording (similar recording methods were used by Commodore on its 51⁄4-inch drives and Sirius Systems
Technology in its Victor 9000 non-PC-compatible MS-DOS machine). Somewhat later, PC-compatible machines began using single-
sided 31⁄2-inch disks with an advertised capacity of 360 kB (the same as a double-sided 51⁄4-inch disk), and a different, incompatible
recording format called MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation). GCR and MFM drives (and their formatted disks) were
incompatible, although the physical disks were the same. In 1986, Apple introduced double-sided, 800 kB disks, still using GCR, and
soon after, IBM began using 720 kB double-sided double-density MFM disks in PCs like the IBM PC Convertible. IBM PC
compatibles adopted it too, while the Amiga used MFM encoding on the same disks to give a capacity of 1 MB (880 KB available
once formatted).

An MFM-based, "high-density" format, displayed as "HD" on the disks themselves and typically advertised as "1.44 MB" was
introduced in 1987; the most common formatted capacity was 1,474,560 bytes.[nb 6] These HD disks had an extra hole in the case on
the opposite side of the write-protect notch. IBM used this format on their PS/2 series introduced in 1987. Apple started using "HD"
in 1988, on the Macintosh IIx, and the HD floppy drive soon became universal on virtually all Macintosh and PC hardware. Apple's
FDHD (Floppy Disk High Density) drive was capable of reading and writing both GCR and MFM formatted disks, and thus made it
relatively easy to exchange files with PC users. Apple later marketed this drive as the SuperDrive. Apple began using the SuperDrive
brand name again in 2001 to denote their all-formats CD/DVD reader/writer.[61] Amiga included "HD" floppy drives relatively late,
with releasing of Amiga 4000 in 1992, and was able to store 1760 KB on it, with ability in software to read/write PC's
1440 KB/720 KB formats.

Besides Sony, Apple was the first major manufacturer to start selling computers with 31⁄2-inch disk drives as well as the first to stop
shipping them in 1998 with the introduction of theiMac.

Another advance in the oxide coatings allowed for a new "extra-high density" ("ED") format at 2880 KB introduced on the
NeXTcube and NeXTstation in 1991, and on IBM PS/2 model 57 also in 1991, but by the time it was available, it was already too
small in capacity to be a useful advance over the HD format and never became widely used. The 31⁄2-inch drives sold more than a
decade later still use the same 1.44 MB HD format that was standardized in 1989, in
ISO 9529-1,2.

See also
Floppy disk variants
History of hard disk drives
History of IBM magnetic disk drives

Notes
1. The Model 85 of System/360 used a mixture of non-volatile Capacitive Read Only Storage and volatile
semiconductor memory; however the latter was mainly used for emulation, microdiagnostics and some low cost
features Pugh, Emerson; et al. (1991). IBM'S 360 and Early 370 Systems. MIT Press. p. 496.
2. Except for the 155, 155 II, 165, 165 II and 195.
3. A Japanese inventor, Yoshiro Nakamatsu, claims to have invented core floppy disk technology , and in 1952,
registered a Japanese patent for hisinvention (http://www.iht.com/articles/1995/04/10/matscon.ttt.php). He further
claims to have later licensed (http://www.pingmag.jp/2006/10/20/twilight-zone-dr-nakamats-inventions)16 patents to
IBM for the creation of the floppy disk. However
, there is no evidence independent of Nakamatsu's assertions that
supports these claims.
4. (48 tpi DSDD) 40 × 2 tracks × 9 blocks/track × 256 × 2 bytes; 8 and 10 blocks/track also existed, for 320 KB and
400 KB capacities (see"recovering data from improperly stored floppy disks"(http://www.swtpc.com/knowledgebase/
kbpage1.htm). Retrieved May 25, 2006.)
5. 80 × 1 tracks × 10 blocks/track × 512 bytes
6. i.e. IBM's format of 512 bytes/sector * 2,880 sectors/disk = 1,474,560 bytes per disk. Other formats could have
somewhat more or less capacity available.
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