this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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The first commercial Compact Disc was created 43 years ago, today — nearly one billion CDs were shipped per year in early 2000's (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 5 days ago by Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to c/hardware@lemmy.world
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[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Prior to CDs, AOL shipped 3.5" microfloppies. These sometimes got erased and used as free storage.

kagis

Apparently people are still selling them, decades later. Honestly, I don't even know if, in 2025, you can read a 3.5" microfloppy that was last written in the 1990s.

kagis

https://www.arcserve.com/blog/data-storage-lifespans-how-long-will-media-really-last

Some manufacturers claimed the lifespan of floppy disks was three to five years, while others said they could last ten to twenty years. Of course, since floppy disks utilize magnetic storage (not unlike tape), it’s safe to say that eventually, the magnetism will wear out around the same time a tape would (ten to twenty years).

I'm kind of surprised that I'm not turning up harder information on longevity, but that sounds plausible to me. Note that they aren't mentioning the capacity that the disk was initialized for

it was possible to, given a drive and disk that supported a higher capacity, to initialize for lower capacity. I don't know if doing that might extend longevity. But I'd be a little skeptical that the actual contents of the disk are readable today.

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I've never heard anyone call 3.5" discs, microfloppies. They are just floppies, despite not being the original size or even floppy anymore.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Get off my lawn, whippersnappers. shakes fist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk

In 1984, IBM introduced with its PC/AT the 1.2 MB (1,228,800 bytes) dual-sided 5¼-inch floppy disk, but it never became very popular. IBM started using the 720 KB double density 3½-inch microfloppy disk on its Convertible laptop computer in 1986 and the 1.44 MB (1,474,560 bytes) high-density version with the IBM Personal System/2 (PS/2) line in 1987. These disk drives could be added to older PC models.

[–] steal_your_face@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

My gf calls me a 3.5" microfloppy :/

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Yea, but that's warranted.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

Duh, everyone knows they’re called save icons.