One of the oldest technologies still remaining in computer systems is the floppy diskette drive. Sure it has evolved over time from the humble 5.25 inch to the 3.5 inch disk and increased in capacity up to 2.88 with the ED format that never caught on, but the time of the floppy is finally coming to an end. The twenty year old technology will still exist in computers for a couple of more years, but soon new computer systems will not feature them except as options or peripherals. Dell recently announced that they would no longer provide floppy drives on certain model computers except as an option. It is sure that other manufacturers will follow suit soon. After all, they can save another $5 by simply removing the drives and not changing the price.

CD-ROMs: The Beginning of the End

Floppy drives served two major purposes in the computer markets during their existence: reusable data transportation and software installation. Floppy drives and diskettes were the only available method in the early computing environment to transfer data from one system to another. Networks did exist then, but only in large institutions and not in the homes. As a result, if you wanted to take a document from work to the home or vice versa, the floppy was the only media available to use. Similarly, when you went to purchase a new software package to install in a computer system, the only media available for the software publishers to provide to customers was through floppy diskettes.

In the early 1990's a new format of software distribution started to become popular, the CD-ROM. It stored an amazing 650 megabytes of data on a single disc compared to the paltry 1.44 megabytes of the 3.5" floppy drives of the day. No longer was it necessary to provide 10 or more diskettes for a single program installation when that same data could be stored on only a fraction of a CD. Add to this was the cost of producing a single CD was much cheaper than having multiple floppies duplicated. The only problem was with the cost and availability of CD-ROM drives. Once the price of these drives came down, this hurdle was overcome and the CD-ROM drive was here to stay.

The floppy was not down an out yet though. Sure CD-ROMs made distributing software easier for the publishers but it was a read-only format. Users could not store any data on it and so the floppy's existence remained as the primary method for transferring files between computer systems. The problem was its limited storage capacity was starting to show. A new technology based on the floppy drive was posed to step in.

The ZIP Drive: Successor to the Floppy?

Iomega had developed a new removable disk technology that was actually very similar to the technologies used in the older floppy drives but updated. The ZIP disks initially started with a capacity of 100 megabytes. That was almost 70 times the storage capacity of the already aging floppy drive. Needless to say the drive was a hit in the marketplace, but it still did not have the same widespread distribution of the floppy drive. It was seen largely as a method for archiving data from computer systems rather than as a portable media. This is most likely caused from Iomega's background in developing tape drives that were specifically used for archiving data from computer systems.

So why didn't the ZIP drive replace the floppy? There are a number of reasons that could be citing. By this time, floppy drives were priced from $15 to $20. In comparison, a ZIP drive was priced about $150 or more. The media was also very expensive. A standard ZIP disk cost as much as 10 to 25 floppy diskettes. This media price point of about $1 per media is a key point to the consumers. Also, the ZIP drive technology was limited to a single manufacturer compared to the industry standard floppy drives. This means that there was limited adoption compared to floppy or CD-ROM drives.

CD-R/RW: The End is Near

With the development of a recordable format for data CD's it was only a matter of time before consumers were able to burn their own data to a disc. The limit to the CD-R format is it only allowed for data to be written once to the media. Once that disc was finalized no more data could be placed on it. But at 650MB that was a lot of data. Of course, most consumers cared more about the audio capabilities of the format than its data potential. The industry responded by developing the CD-RW format. Now it was possible for the consumers to burn data to the disc and then erase the disc for future use. Increases in the speed of the drives also helped decrease the amount of time it took to create a disk.

The problem with the initial release of the CD-R and CD-RW drives was the costs and the media. The early drives cost upwards of $400 and the media was just as expensive as the ZIP diskettes. As long as the prices remained at these levels, the usefulness of the format was limited. Once the drive prices reached about $200 and the media was around $2 to $5 for a single disc, things started to change. System manufacturers started including these drives on pretty much all machines. But the floppy drive remained. The main culprit for this was the fact that extra software was necessary to transfer data to the media. This lack of a standard interface similar to a hard drive or floppy usage prevented it from fully replacing the floppy diskette.

USB Flash Drives: The Final Nail in the Coffin

Enter a series of new technologies to make transferring data incredibly easy. In the late '90s a new interface technology called Universal Serial Bus or USB was developed. It was slow to catch on at first primarily due to support in the operating systems. Once the software was included as a standard in Windows 98, the technology really started to flourish. This new technology allowed for a wide range of peripheral devices to be added or removed from the computer without requiring the system to be rebooted. Most of all the major peripheral devices now feature USB 1.1 or the new 2.0 format as standard interfaces allowing for extreme flexibility.

One of the most recent developments in USB devices is the use of flash memory. Flash memory is a non-volatile memory chip that retains the data stored on the device even when power is removed from it. It can be found in most consumer products and devices now including phones, watches, PDAs, MP3 players and digital cameras. With such a wide implementation of devices such using it, flash memory development increased and prices decreased. Eventually, the flash memory makers figured a new way to use the memory, flash drives.

A flash drive is simply a small device with a USB connector, a series of flash memory chips and a controller. It functions just like any other flash media except that its interface controller for computers is built in through its USB interface. This allows for the flash drives to be inserted or removed from any computer and operating system that supports USB to instantly access the data by plugging the drive into a free USB port, transfer your files to the drive and unplug the drive. That's all that is required.

The Final Days

Even with all these new floppy alternatives such as CD-RW and flash drives becoming very common, the floppy drives will remain around for a few more years. The main reason they will continue to exist is for backwards compatibility with older systems that have operating systems that do not support the new technologies or to read data from the diskettes lying around the house. Today, many computer used may not have even used their floppy drives for several years as there is little need to. A few utility programs such as diagnostic tools exist on floppy diskette, but with bootable CD capability, even that is fading. The death of the floppy drive as a computer technology has finally come and its time to embrace its alternatives.

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