The floppy disc is a data carrier which is based upon the same storage principle as the hard drive. A magnetic disc is being polarised by a writing/reading head in two directions, depending on the data.

The first floppy discs displaced punchcards and magnetic tapes to save data. The first home computers (e.g. Commodore C64) had 5,25" drives whose floppy discs were able to hold 360 KB of data. Today floppy discs have a size of 3,5" and they hold up to 1,44 MB (1474 KB).

Numerous enhancements of the floppy disc exist, for example the "superdisc", which can save up to 100 MB and the drives are also able to read traditional floppy discs. A further enhancement is the development of the ZIP floppy disc from Iomega. They hold a data amount of 100-250 MB and got accepted in the field of graphics for example. Due to their different shape, they require new drives though.






Floppy Disc im deutschen Lexikon
Floppy Disc in het nederlandse encyclopedie