The end of the floppy is nigh

By Clement James on Jan 31, 2007 9:25 AM
Filed under Storage

PC World to phase out 30 year-old medium.

The floppy disk has finally fallen out of favour after more than 30 years of faithful service.

UK retailer PC World has said that it will not restock the storage medium when its present supplies run out.

The computer store said that 98 percent of new PCs do not have floppy drives, a figure that it expects to hit 100 percent in the near future.

Bryan Magrath, commercial director of PC World, claimed that the technology is outdated and has been replaced by the internet and USB memory sticks, some of which can store 1,000 times as much data as a floppy.

"With that amount of memory available in such a small and convenient device, the floppy disk looks increasingly quaint and is not able to compete," he said.

IBM introduced the first floppy disk in 1969, an 8in device with 81KB of storage capacity. The more familiar 3.5in 1.44MB disk did not make an appearance until 1987.