Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive or FDD.[1] Invented by the American information technology company IBM, floppy disks in 8-inch (200 mm), 5¼-inch (130 mm) and 3½-inch (90 mm) forms enjoyed three decades as a popular and ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange, from the mid-1970s well into the 2000s.
While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy industrial computer equipment, they have now been superseded by USB flash drives, external hard disk drives, optical discs, memory cards and computer networks.
Operation
Internal parts of a 3 1/2-inch floppy disk. 1 is a hole that indicates a high-capacity disk. 2 is the hub that drives. 3 is a shutter that protects the surface when removed from the drive. 4 is the plastic housing, 5 is a polyester sheet that allows the disk media to rotate within the housing.
6 is the magnetic coated plastic disk and 7 is a schematic representation of one sector of data on the disk; the tracks and sectors are not visible.
