The evolution of removable media: from floppy disks to magneto-optics.

The history of the storage medium we call "floppy disk" goes back almost four decades. True, the modern 3.5-inch floppy disk is a little younger - it is “only” 29 years old.

At the end of April, Sony Corporation announced its decision to stop producing 3.5-inch computer floppy disks in Japan as of March 2011. Many people have probably long forgotten about the existence of such a medium, but the message sounded symbolic: the company that once upon a time developed this modification of a magnetic disk is solemnly saying goodbye to it.

The history of the storage medium we call "floppy disk" goes back almost four decades. True, the modern 3.5-inch floppy disk is a little younger - it is “only” 29 years old. But what kind! Over these decades, the world has changed beyond recognition: some countries disappeared from the map and others appeared... What about countries, computers have become millions of times more powerful and miniature! Thanks to discoveries in the field of information technology and electronics, devices have appeared and become firmly established in life, even the purpose of which few would have guessed forty years ago. Several generations have passed computer technology, and the floppy disk remained almost the same as immediately after birth.

It is believed that the first “memory disk”, which was later called a “floppy disk”, was released by the American company IBM in 1971. Work on flexible magnetic disks began back in 1967: a group of engineers led by Alan Shugart was tasked with developing an inexpensive (no more than $5) and reliable removable media for storing and transferring computer firmware. It sounds funny today, but the problem was that the firmware for processors and other electronics was then stored in semiconductor memory, which was simply erased whenever the power was turned off.

Senior engineer David Noble proposed a solution quite in the spirit of the times: an 8-inch plastic disk, on which a layer of magnetic iron oxide Fe3O4 was deposited. To protect the disc from dust, a soft case made of non-woven material was invented, which at the same time wiped the media during rotation. The capacity of this world's first floppy disk was as much as 80 KB and, after passing tests, the device for working with these drives received registration in the IBM System 370 machine.

Floppy drive and 8-inch floppy disk

With the advent of the first personal computers, the need arose for more compact removable media. Since the vast majority of such cars did not have hard drive- it was too expensive - the operating system was loaded from one floppy disk, which was then removed and replaced with a floppy disk with the desired application and data. Two drives greatly simplified the work, and to install them in one computer they had to be not too large in size.

Legend has it that one day in a bar, engineers Jim Adkisson and Don Massaro discussed the optimal dimensions of such a carrier with the head of Wang Laboratories, En Vaughn. The attention of the interlocutors was attracted by an ordinary napkin, the dimensions of which were taken as a basis - this is how floppy disks with a diameter of 5.25 inches appeared in 1976.

5.25-inch

Their initial capacity was already 98.5 KB, and a little later - 110 KB. Floppy disks could have one (SS) or two working surfaces (DS), which, naturally, doubled their capacity, and in 1978 the production of “double density” (DD) floppy disks began - 360 KB. On protective case special holes appeared that allowed the drive to determine their capacity, as well as a square cutout that prevented accidental erasure of data: in order to record it, it had to be sealed.

As the years passed, computers became smaller and smaller, but floppy disks remained the same. In addition, they had a significant drawback - they easily bent and became useless. Many companies offered their own versions of smaller media with a diameter of 3 to 3.5 inches - in particular, the 3-inch Mitsumi QuickDisk even became the standard for electronic keyboards in the mid-eighties.

But Sony was luckier than others: in 1982, the Microfloppy Industry Committee consortium, which united 23 magnetic disk manufacturers, adopted the design developed in 1981 by Japanese engineers as the basis for a new standard. The first 3.5-inch floppy disks, exactly the same in appearance as those sold today, appeared on the market in 1983.

3.5" floppy disk

Unlike the previous “floppy disks,” the new ones were placed in a hard plastic case and now they could only be bent by breaking them. However, the English name remained the same, “floppy disk” - to distinguish it from the increasingly common " hard drives".

The capacity of 3.5-inch floppy disks was also constantly growing: at first, 360 (on a PC) or 400 (on a Macintosh) KB of data could be written to such media, then “double-sided” disks with 720 (PC) or 800 (Macintosh) KB appeared, and in 1987, the HD format was introduced, allowing 1.44 MB of data to be stored on one magnetic disk. So, strictly speaking, the modern floppy disk is only 23 years old - the most creative age by human standards: no longer youth, but not yet maturity.

And attempts to bury the 3.5-inch floppy disk began, one might say, from her very childhood: in 1998 Apple company pointedly refused to build a floppy drive into her new iMac G3 desktop computer - and this despite the fact that all Macintoshes up to that point were necessarily equipped with such a drive! The computer was made in the form of a candy bar, and right under the screen there was a slot for loading the most modern media for those years - a CD. Even then, according to the company’s marketers, the spread of CD-writer drives, office local area networks and the advent of the public Internet made floppy disks with their tiny capacity simply unnecessary.

iMac G3

As time has shown, Apple was in a hurry, but not by much: in 2003, the largest computer manufacturer in the United States, Dell, stopped installing floppy drives in desktop computers as standard equipment. A little earlier, “flop swallowers” ​​disappeared from laptops. The era of floppy disks is over.

However, it is still too early to say goodbye to floppy disks completely. You will be surprised, but floppy disks are still used in quite modern industries: in aviation - for updating navigation databases, in test telecommunications equipment - for recording logs, in machines for metal working and molding plastic parts - for downloading programs. Floppy disks in all countries are loved by all kinds of government agencies and, especially, tax inspectorates. Finally, floppy disks are still used to program keyboard synthesizers and even ATMs!

So it’s too early to write off 3.5-inch floppy disks. In addition, another of the largest manufacturers of "floppy disks", the Verbatim company, assures with full responsibility that we will see these wonderful boxes on the shelves of electronics stores for a long time.

Despite the end of the floppy disk era, 3.5 floppy disks are still used in Everyday life.

Let's take a closer look at where they can be found, what's special about them and why the floppy disk is still one of the most or transfer classified information.

Contents:

Basic concepts and history of use

Floppy disk- This physical media information with which data can be repeatedly moved, erased, or rewritten.

In simple words, this is a simplified version of modern flash drives and disk drives.

The floppy disk was the first to appear.

Externally, the device has a rectangular shape and a plastic case. A ferrimagnetic layer is applied on top, with the help of which the floppy drive reads information. You can't read a floppy disk using . To do this, you will need a special floppy drive.

Today it can only be found in older desktop computers. Typically the drive is located at the bottom of the case and has the following form:

The first floppy disk was created in 1967 by Alan Shugart- at that time one of the leading specialists at IBM. Before 1076, Shugart created and developed his own company, which began supplying storage drives to computer system developers. This began the era of using floppy disks. Most popular format developed floppy disks Sony company in 1981. A drive with a diameter of 3.5 inches can still be found in stores. Also, it is this type of floppy disk that is recognizable. In most programs, a key with a 3.5-inch floppy disk icon means saving actions.

Floppy disks were common among users from the 70s to the 90s of the last century.

With invention optical disks The popularity of floppy disks gradually began to wane. As you know, today they are being removed from use optical discs.

Many manufacturers of laptops and personal computers have completely abandoned the use of disk drives.

Despite this, floppy disks are still produced and sold.

With the onset of the 2010s, all global IT corporations began to abandon the production of floppy disks.

For example, in 2011 Sony announced that it would completely stop creating and selling 3.5-inch floppy disks.

Now they can only be manufactured by order of the government.

Other cases of failure of floppy disks:

• year 2014– Toshiba announced the closure of its disk manufacturing plant. That same year, the plant was converted into a huge organic vegetable farm;
• 2015– developers from Microsoft decided not to create support for floppy disks in . This OS does not work with floppy disks and it will be impossible to connect an external drive. The system simply “will not see” the device;
• 2016- The Pentagon drew up a modernization plan, one of the goals of which was to abandon the use of floppy disks. The plan is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2018.

Floppy disk formats

Types of floppy disks are divided depending on the diameter of the drive. Over the entire period of floppy disk distribution The following formats existed:

• 8-inch;

The first type of floppy disk that became widespread among PC users was the eight-inch drive.

Externally, it has a rectangular shape and is made of polymer materials.

The magnetic mechanism itself is located inside a plastic case. Inside there is a special recess with which the drive reads information from. After the drive starts up, the device reads the location of the first track. This is how the process of “decrypting” information from the floppy disk begins.

An eight-inch floppy disk can have a capacity of 80 KB, 256 KB, or 800 KB. Over time, such a volume of information even became insufficient, so the development of floppy disks with a larger volume began.

• 5.25 inches;

This generation of floppy disks is practically no different in appearance from eight-inch drives.

The only difference- improved index holes for data reading.

Thanks to the use of new technology for creating material for the case, the disc was preserved for a longer time and was resistant to scratches and falls from low heights.

These types of floppy disks were either single-sided or double-sided. To start using the additional side, you just had to turn the drive over. On single-sided models, this action could thin out the drive.

5.25-inch floppy disks could store 110 KB, 360 KB, 720 KB, or 1200 KB of information.

The production of such floppy disks ended in the early 2000s.

• 3.5 inches;

The 3.5-inch floppy disk is the most popular floppy drive option.

Externally, it differs from previous generations with an even more durable body, as well as a completely solid surface.

In this type of floppy disk, it became possible to install .

it can be configured by the floppy disk user before the first recording of information to removable media.

The capacity of a 3.5 floppy disk is determined by the square holes in the lower right corner of the device. One square - capacity 720 KB, two - 1.44 MB and three - 2.88 MB.

Despite all the disadvantages of using floppy disks, namely small capacity and sensitivity to influence magnetic field, the 3.5 floppy was popular even after the release of optical discs.

All because of the convenience of data transfer and the cheap cost of floppy disks and disk drives.

According to archaeologists, the desire to record information appeared in humans approximately forty thousand years ago. The very first carrier was rock. This stationary data storage had a lot of advantages (reliability, resistance to damage, large capacity, high speed reading) and one drawback (labor-intensive and slow writing). Therefore, over time, more and more advanced storage media began to appear.

Perforated paper tape

Most early computers used paper tape wound on reels. Information was stored on it in the form of holes. Some machines, such as the Colossus Mark 1 (1944), worked with data entered via real-time tape. Later computers, such as the Manchester Mark 1 (1949), read programs from tape and loaded them into a primitive form of electronic memory for subsequent execution. Punched tape has been used to write and read data for thirty years.

Punch cards

The history of punch cards goes back to the very beginning of the 19th century, when they were used to control looms. In 1890, Herman Hollerith used a punched card to process U.S. census data. It was he who found a company (the future IBM) that used such cards in its calculating machines.

In the 1950s, IBM was already making full use of punched cards in its computers for storing and entering data, and soon other manufacturers began to use this medium. At that time, 80-column cards were common, in which a separate column was allocated for one symbol. Some may be surprised, but in 2002 IBM was still developing punch card technology. True, in the 21st century the company was interested in cards the size of a postage stamp, capable of storing up to 25 million pages of information.

Magnetic tape

With the release of the first American commercial computer, UNIVAC I (1951), the era of magnetic film began in the IT industry. The pioneer, as usual, was IBM again, and then others followed suit. Magnetic tape was wound openly onto reels and consisted of a very thin strip of plastic coated with a magnetically sensitive substance.

The machines recorded and read data using special magnetic heads built into the reel drive. Magnetic tape was widely used in many computer models (especially mainframes and minicomputers) until the 1980s, when tape cartridges were invented.

The first removable disks

In 1963, IBM introduced the first hard drive with removable disk– IBM 1311. It was a set of interchangeable disks. Each set consisted of six disks with a diameter of 14 inches, holding up to 2 MB of information. In the 1970s, many hard drives, such as the DEC RK05, supported such disk sets, and they were especially often used by minicomputer manufacturers to sell software.

Tape cartridges

In the 1960s, computer hardware manufacturers learned to put rolls of magnetic tape into miniature plastic cartridges. They differed from their predecessors, the reels, in their long life, portability and convenience. They became most widespread in the 1970s and 1980s. Like reels, cartridges proved to be very flexible media: if there was a lot of information to be recorded, more tape simply fit into the cartridge.

Today, tape cartridges like the 800GB LTO Ultrium are used for large-scale server support, although their popularity has fallen in recent years due to the greater convenience of transferring data from hard drive to hard drive.

Printing on paper

In the 1970s, personal computers gained popularity due to their relatively low cost. However, the existing methods of storing data were unaffordable for many. One of the first PCs, MITS Altair, was supplied without storage media at all. Users were asked to enter programs using special toggle switches on the front panel. Then, at the dawn of the development of personal computers, users often had to literally insert sheets of paper into the computer
handwritten programs. Later, the programs began to be distributed in printed form through paper magazines.

Floppy disks

In 1971, the first IBM floppy disk was released. It was an 8-inch flexible disk coated with a magnetic substance, placed in a plastic case. Users quickly realized that for loading data into a computer, “floppy disks” were faster, cheaper, and more compact than stacks of punched cards. In 1976, one of the creators of the first floppy disk, Alan Shugart, proposed its new format - 5.25 inches. It existed in this size until the end of the 1980s, until Sony's 3.5-inch floppy disks appeared. How it started...

In the late 60s, the American company IBM proposed a new storage device that used a floppy disk. A flexible disk works in the same way as a hard disk, but is made in the form of an elastic round plate with a plastic base coated with a magnetic composition. The disc is placed in a special flexible cassette sleeve that protects it from mechanical damage and dust.

The disk with the envelope is installed by the user into a special device (disk drive). In this device, it rotates inside the envelope at a speed of about 300 rpm.

To reduce friction, the inside of the envelope is coated with a special material. Through specially made slots, the magnetic read-write head of the drive contacts the surface of the disk and reads or writes the corresponding information. A floppy magnetic disk drive (FMD) is a complex mechanical device; it requires connection to a computer of a special electronic controller unit, which converts commands coming from the machine to the drive, monitors their execution, and also manages the data exchange process.

IBM proposed the use of floppy disks with a diameter of 203 mm (8 English inches) and developed a corresponding standard for these disk drives.

A new external memory device has begun to gain great popularity. In 1976, about 200 thousand devices were sold, in 1981 already 3-4 million, for a total amount of 2.3 billion dollars, and in 1984 8.2 million were delivered. NGMD in the amount of 4.2 billion dollars. Only in the USA in 1984 for NGMD 285 million floppy disks were manufactured.

Along with the rapid development of computer technology, the NGMD. In the early 70s, American inventor Allen Shugart proposed reducing the diameter of the discs to 133 mm (5.25 inches). In 1976, the company he formed, Shugart Associates, released the first drives with floppy disks of this size, called minidisks (minifloppy). Despite the initially smaller amount of external memory, these drives were half the price of standard 203mm drives. The latter circumstance immediately attracted the attention of a wide group of PC users.

Improvements in recording quality and the quality of magnetic heads made it possible to move to flexible disks with double recording density.

The first 203 mm and 133 mm floppy disks used only one side of the disk. In order to increase the volume external storage devices were developed and began to be supplied in which information was written and read from both sides of the disk. This increased the memory capacity by 2 times, and taking into account the double recording density - by 4 times.

Development and production NGMD There were several dozen companies in the USA, Japan, Germany and other countries. These devices quickly replaced tape drives in many PC applications. Usage NGMD increased system performance by an order of magnitude.

Currently external memory on floppy disks has become an integral part of the standard configuration of most educational and all professional PCs.

In what directions did further technical development take place? NGMD ?

Firstly, the physical dimensions of storage devices continued to decrease, in particular in height. Many companies produced half-height drives, i.e. two devices could be placed in the previous case.

Secondly, successful attempts were made to reduce the diameter of the disks, and therefore the dimensions of the drive. Thus, the Japanese company Sony developed NGMD with discs with a diameter of 89 mm (3.5 inches). The disc is placed in a hard sleeve measuring 90x94 mm (3.54x3.7 inches) and 1.3 mm thick, equipped with a special metal “curtain”. When a disk is inserted into the drive, the “shutter” automatically slides open to reveal a slot in the envelope through which the magnetic head interacts with the floppy disk. With double recording density, such a disc with single-sided recording holds 360 KB, and with double-sided recording - 720 KB.

A standard Sony drive cost about 10% more than a drive on 133 mm disks, and 89 mm disks themselves were 2-2.5 times more expensive than similar 133 mm disks. However, the small size of the disks and the drive itself, the rigid design of the envelope with the disk and the protection of the disk surface using a “shutter” attracted people to this type. NGMD a significant number of users. Drives with 89 mm disks with a capacity of 720 KB have found use in many portable PCs, for example, in models of the Japanese company Toshiba - T1100, T1200, T3100, American companies Zenith Data Systems - Z181, Bondwell Inc. - Bondwell 8 and etc. IBM uses NGMD with disks with a diameter of 89 mm, a capacity of 720 KB and 1.44 MB.

Thirdly, through the use of new technical means and technologies, a number of companies have developed NGMD with increased memory capacity.

Thus, IBM in PC AT used drives on 133 mm disks with a capacity of 1.2 MB of formatted memory. By moving to a higher density of tracks on the disk, it was possible to more than double the capacity of the PC's external storage.

The Japanese company Hitachi-Maxwell announced the development of 133 mm flexible magnetic disks with a memory capacity of 19 MB per disk. In a short period of time, the capacity of 89 mm disks increased from 360 KB to 1.44 MB.

By the beginning of 1987, 133 mm disks for PCs from IBM were the most common in the world, and drives on disks with a diameter of 203 mm had practically ceased to be produced. The 89mm market is growing very quickly NGMD.

According to estimates from Dataquest (USA), the production of 133 mm drives grew from 8.2 million units in 1985 to 11 million units in 1987, and then fell by 1991 to 7.3 million units . At the same time, the production of 89 mm drives increased from 603 thousand units in 1985 to 14 million units in 1991, i.e. by the end of the 80s it exceeded the production of 133 mm drives.

The cost of a standard drive for the IBM PC with 133 mm disks with a capacity of 360 KB was $65 in the USA in mid-1987, and with 89 mm disks with a capacity of 720 KB - $150.

Compact cassettes

The compact cassette was invented by Philips, which had the idea to place two small reels of magnetic film in a plastic case. It was in this format that audio recordings were made in the 1960s. HP used such cassettes in its HP 9830 desktop (1972), but at first such cassettes were not particularly popular as digital information storage media. Then, seekers of inexpensive storage media nevertheless turned their gaze towards cassettes, which, thanks to their light hand, remained in demand until the early 1980s. By the way, data on them could be loaded from a regular audio player.

Since the introduction of the first magnetic storage device (IBM RAMAC), the growth of surface recording density has reached 25 percent per year, and since the early 1990s - 60 percent. The development and introduction of magnetoresistive (1991) and giant magnetoresistive (1997) heads further accelerated the increase in surface recording density. In the 45 years since the first magnetic data storage devices appeared, the surface recording density has increased by more than 5 million times.

In modern 3.5-inch drives, the value of this parameter is 10-20 Gbit/inch 2 , and in experimental models it reaches 40 Gbit/inch 2 . This allows the production of drives with a capacity of more than 400 GB.

ROM cartridges

A ROM cartridge is a card consisting of a read-only memory (ROM) and a connector enclosed in a hard shell. Field of application of cartridges – computer games and programs. Thus, in 1976, Fairchild released a ROM cartridge for recording software for the Fairchild Channel F video console. Soon, home computers such as the Atari 800 (1979) or TI-99/4 (1979) were also adapted to use ROM cartridges.

ROM cartridges were easy to use, but relatively expensive, which is why they “died.”

The Great Floppy Disk Experiments

In the 1980s, many companies tried to create an alternative to the 3.5-inch floppy disk. One such invention (pictured above in the center) can hardly be called a floppy disk even at a stretch: the ZX Microdrive cartridge consisted of a huge roll of magnetic tape, similar to an eight-track cassette. Another experimenter, Apple, created the FileWare floppy disk (right) that came with the first Apple computer Lisa - the worst device in the company's history according to Network World, as well as a 3-inch Compact Disk (bottom left) and a now rare 2-inch floppy disk

LT-1 (top left), used exclusively in the 1989 Zenith Minisport laptop. Other experiments resulted in products that became niche and failed to replicate the success of their 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch predecessors.

Optical disc

The CD, originally used as a digital audio storage medium, owes its birth to a joint project between Sony and Philips and first appeared on the market in 1982. Digital data is stored on this plastic medium in the form of micro-grooves on its mirror surface, and the information is read using a laser head.
As it turned out, digital CDs are the best suited for storing computer data, and soon the same Sony and Philips finalized the new product.

This is how the world learned about CD-ROMs in 1985.

Over the next 25 years, the optical disc has undergone a lot of changes, its evolutionary chain includes DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray. A significant milestone was the introduction of CD-Recordable (CD-R) in 1988, which allowed users to burn data to disc themselves. In the late 1990s, optical disks finally became cheaper, finally relegating floppy disks to the background.

Magneto-optical media

Like compact discs, magneto-optical discs are “read” by a laser. However, unlike conventional CDs and CD-Rs, most magneto-optical media allow data to be written and erased repeatedly. This is achieved through the interaction of a magnetic process and a laser when recording data. The first magneto-optical disk was included with the NeXT computer (1988, photo below right), and its capacity was 256 MB. The most famous media of this type is the Sony MiniDisc audio disc (top center, 1992). It also had a “brother” for storing digital data, which was called MD-DATA (top left). Magneto-optical disks are still produced, but due to their low capacity and relatively high cost, they have become niche products.

Iomega and Zip Drive

Iomega made its presence felt in the storage media market in the 1980s with the release of Bernoulli Box magnetic disk cartridges with capacities ranging from 10 to 20 MB.

A later interpretation of this technology was embodied in the so-called Zip media (1994), which could hold up to 100 MB of information on an inexpensive 3.5-inch disk. The format was popular due to its affordable price and good capacity, and Zip disks remained at the crest of popularity until the end of the 1990s. However, CD-Rs that had already appeared at that time could record up to 650 MB, and when their price dropped to a few cents apiece, sales of Zip disks fell catastrophically. Iomega made an attempt to save the technology and developed disks of 250 and 750 MB in size, but by that time CD-Rs had already completely conquered the market. And so Zip became history.

Floppy-disks

The first super floppy disk was released by Insight Peripherals in 1992. The 3.5-inch disk held 21 MB of information. Unlike other media, this format was compatible with earlier traditional 3.5-inch floppy drives. The secret to the high efficiency of such drives lay in the combination floppy disk and optics, that is, data was recorded in a magnetic environment using a laser head, which provided more accurate recording and more tracks, respectively, more space. In the late 1990s, two new formats appeared - Imation LS-120 SuperDisk (120 MB, bottom right) and Sony HiFD (150 MB, top right). The new products became serious competitors to the Iomega Zip drive, but in the end, the CD-R format won over everyone.

A mess in the world of portable media

The resounding success of the Zip Drive in the mid-1990s spawned a host of similar devices, whose manufacturers hoped to grab a piece of the market from Zip. Iomega's main competitors include SyQuest, which first fragmented its own market segment and then ruined its product line with excessive variety - SyJet, SparQ, EZFlyer and EZ135. Another serious, but “murky” rival is Castlewood Orb, which came up with a Zip-like disk with a capacity of 2.2 GB.

Finally, Iomega itself has made an attempt to supplement the Zip drive with other types of removable media - from large removable hard drives (1- and 2-GB Jaz Drive) to a miniature 40 MB Clik drive. But none reached the heights of Zip.

Flash is coming

In the early 1980s, Toshiba came up with NAND flash memory, but the technology only became popular a decade later, following the advent of digital cameras and PDA. At this time, it begins to be realized in different forms - from large credit cards(intended for use in early handhelds) to CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Secure Digital, Memory Stick and xD Picture Cards.

Flash memory cards are convenient, first of all, because they have no moving parts. In addition, they are economical, durable and relatively inexpensive with ever-increasing memory capacity. The first CF cards held 2 MB, but now their capacity reaches 128 GB.

Much less

The IBM/Hitachi promotional slide shows a tiny Microdrive hard drive. It appeared in 2003 and for some time won the hearts of computer users.

The iPod and other media players, which debuted in 2001, are equipped with similar devices based on a rotating disk, but manufacturers quickly became disillusioned with such a drive: it was too fragile, energy-intensive and small in volume. So this format is almost “buried”.

1956 - HDD IBM 350 as part of the first production IBM 305 RAMAC computer. The drive occupied a box the size of a large refrigerator and weighed 971 kg, and the total memory capacity of 50 thin disks covered with pure iron with a diameter of 610 mm rotating in it was about 5 million 6-bit bytes (3.5 MB in terms of 8-bit bytes) .

Here's the thing about hard drives.
* 1980 - the first 5.25-inch Winchester, Shugart ST-506, 5 MB.
* 1981 - 5.25-inch Shugart ST-412, 10 MB.
* 1986 - SCSI, ATA (IDE) standards.
* 1991 - maximum capacity 100 MB.
* 1995 - maximum capacity 2 GB.
* 1997 - maximum capacity 10 GB.
* 1998 - UDMA/33 and ATAPI standards.
* 1999 - IBM releases Microdrive with a capacity of 170 and 340 MB.
* 2002 - ATA/ATAPI-6 standard and drives with a capacity of over 137 GB.
* 2003 - the appearance of SATA.
* 2005 - maximum capacity 500 GB.
* 2005 - Serial ATA 3G (or SATA II) standard.
* 2005 - the appearance of SAS (Serial Attached SCSI).
* 2006 - application of the perpendicular recording method in commercial drives.
* 2006 - the appearance of the first “hybrid” hard drives containing a flash memory block.
* 2007 - Hitachi introduces the first commercial drive with a capacity of 1 TB.
* 2009 - based on 500 GB platters Western Digital, then Seagate Technology LLC released models with a capacity of 2 TB.
* 2009 - Western Digital announced the creation of 2.5-inch HDDs with a capacity of 1 TB (recording density - 333 GB on one plate)
* 2009 - the emergence of the SATA 3.0 standard (SATA 6G).

The Coming of USB

In 1998, the USB era began. The undeniable convenience of USB devices has made them an almost integral part of the lives of all PC users. Over the years, they decrease in physical size, but become more capacious and cheaper. Especially popular were the “flash drives”, or USB thumb drives, which appeared in 2000 (from the English thumb - “ thumb"), so named for their size - about the size of a human finger. Thanks to their large capacity and small size, USB drives have become perhaps the best storage media invented by mankind.

Transition to virtuality

Over the past fifteen years, local networks and the Internet have been gradually replacing portable storage media from the lives of PC users. Since today almost any computer has access to the global network, users rarely need to transfer data to external devices or copy it to another computer. Nowadays, wires and electronic signals are responsible for the transfer of information. Wireless standards Bluetooth and Wi-Fi completely make physical computer connections unnecessary.

"Back in 1967. Specialists from the IBM laboratory from San Jose, engaged in the development of storage media, are trying to create an inexpensive device capable of storing and transmitting firmware for processors, mainframes and control modules. The price of the device should not exceed 5 USD (otherwise, it will not be considered replaceable). Delivery should not cause any difficulties, and reliability should not cause doubts."

Now it's 2005 - 38 years have passed since the first prototype of the floppy disk appeared, but FDD continues to live! What is the secret of such vitality of this “relic” of the past, the same as matrix printer or COM port? It seems to me that the ratio is price/reliability/quality. It is now difficult for us to understand what revolution a regular floppy disk caused in its time. It's a pity! In an instant, tons of punched cards and kilometers of magnetic tape were no longer needed. One plastic envelope and no problems or errors! What will be discussed today should fully reveal to the reader the genius of such an inconspicuous, at first glance, invention as an ordinary floppy disk.

It is believed that floppy drive disks were invented in 1971 to solve a problem that IBM faced when creating the System 370 computer. The problem was that the programs stored in its semiconductor memory were erased whenever the computer's power was turned off. "To reboot the machine, we had to write it into memory again control program“,” recalled Al Shugart, who was then the manager of storage devices direct access at IBM. Subsequently, the founder of Shugart Associates and a manufacturer of storage devices - Seagate Technology.

Although Shugart is often called the father of the floppy disk, he himself considers David Noble to be its real creator. Noble, was a senior engineer at the San Jose laboratory and steadfastly bore the rigors of work as Shugart's only subordinate. First of all, Noble tested the then existing technologies. But I soon realized that we had to look for fundamentally new ways. It was then that the first floppy disk was proposed. Within a year, Noble (whose group had already expanded significantly) completed work on a device that IBM called a “memory disk.” It was actually a floppy disk. It was an 8-inch plastic disk coated with ferrous oxide, providing read-only access. This disk weighed about 2 ounces, its capacity was 80 KB. A turning point in the creation of the floppy disk was the invention of the protective case. “We got our disk working, but we couldn’t come up with a good protective shell for it,” Shugart recalled. - “Any speck of dust completely destroyed the data. The percentage of errors was very high.” And so the developers came up with the idea of ​​placing the device in a case made of non-woven material, which would ensure constant wiping of the surface of the floppy disk as it rotates. This way the surface always remained clean. "That idea ultimately made the difference," says Shugart.

After extensive testing, the floppy disk was built into the System 370; this happened in 1971. It was also used to load firmware into IBM's Merlin 3330 disk package controller.

Yet the floppy disk design, introduced in 1971, did not become the industry standard, said Jim Porter, now president of the research firm Disk/Trend. In those times about which we're talking about, Porter worked for MEMOREX, an independent floppy disk company. In 1973, IBM introduced a new version of the floppy disk, this time for the 3704 Data Entry System. “The recording format was completely different, and the floppy disk rotated in the wrong direction,” Porter explained. It provided read-write capabilities and allowed storage of up to 256 KB of data. Users now have the ability to enter data from floppy disks rather than punched cards. The fundamental difference between the invention and all previous ones was in the floppy disk drive (floppy disk, or simply floppy disk), where there were two motors: one ensured a stable rotation speed of the floppy disk inserted into the drive, and the second moved the read-write head. The rotation speed of the first engine depended on the type of floppy disk and ranged from 300 to 360 rpm. The motor for moving the heads in these drives has always been a stepper motor. With its help, the heads moved along a radius from the edge of the disk to its center at discrete intervals. Unlike a hard drive, the heads in this device did not “hover” above the surface, but touched it.

IBM representatives claimed that the new device can accommodate the same amount of information as 3 thousand punched cards. The release of a new floppy disk was a kind of firing of the starting gun for manufacturers of these devices. Even now some companies use eight-inch floppy disks!!! Mainly when working with computerized machines. But in 1976, around the same time as the first personal computers, the 5.25-inch floppy disk was developed.

According to Porter (Wang Laboratories) - who was working on a desktop computer that could perform the functions word processor: - “The eight-inch floppy disk was obviously too big for him.” The company, in collaboration with Shugart Associates, began work on a smaller device." "We discussed the size of the floppy disk very heatedly - we spent the whole night in one of the bars in Boston. The answer was suggested to us by chance - someone noticed a napkin placed under a glass of cocktail; its size was exactly 5.25 inches,” Porter recalled. “We stole it, brought it to Boston and told our engineers: “Since such a trifle is in demand, let our floppy disk be the same size.” The improvement of floppy disks did not stop at the size of a napkin; as a result, the now so popular three-inch floppy disk, developed by Sony Corporation more than 30 years ago, appeared. This drive has lived a rich life and lives to this day, although it should be noted that most companies have already abandoned their own production of three-inch floppy disks. One of the first companies to close its floppy disk factories was KAO in 1996, followed by IBM and 3M/Imation. Most of these companies have transferred production to third parties or switched to the now newfangled practice of outsourcing. Already in the mid-90s, all experts started talking about the fact that the speed, and most importantly, the capacity of floppy disks, no longer meets the needs of today. Consumption of standard floppy disks stabilized, and by the end of 2000, sales began to decline worldwide.

Sales of 3.5" floppy disks in Europe (million units)

YEAR 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

Sales 565 560 572 505 450

The situation in Russia turned out to be somewhat different. Here, the growth of the floppy disk market in quantitative terms continued until 2002. Now it’s worth turning to technical side question. It is known that for each standard size of floppy disk (5.25 or 3.5 inches), its own special drives of the corresponding form factor were developed. Floppy disks of each standard size (5.25 and 3.5 inches) became double-sided (DS), and single-sided ones gradually ceased to be produced.

The recording density could be different:

• single (Single Density, SD);
• double (Double Density, DD);
• high (High Density, HD).

Since few people remember about single density anymore, I will skip this classification and talk only about double-sided double-density floppy disks (DS/DD, capacity 360 or 720 KB) and double-sided floppy disks high density(DS/HD, capacity 1.2, 1.44 or 2.88 MB). The recording density of a floppy disk is determined by the size of the gap between the disk and the magnetic head, and the quality of the recording (reading) itself depends on the stability of the gap. To increase density, it was vital to reduce the gap. However, at the same time, the requirements for the quality of the working surface of the floppy disk increased significantly. Aluminum alloy D16MP (MP - magnetic memory) began to be used as a material for the manufacture of magnetic disks.

The floppy disk itself was a layer of magnetically soft material deposited on a special substrate made of a polymer non-magnetic plastic substance, the degree of rigidity of which could vary depending on the implementation. The carrier itself was placed in a paper, plastic or other casing. In the casing, the floppy disk rotated freely by the disk drive through the window of the central grip. This ensured that the track area passed under the read/write device - the read/write head. There were holes on the floppy disk casing:

• · central grip;
• · head positioning hole;
• · physical write protection hole;
• · guide holes and grooves;
• · holes automatically determine the type of magnetic coating;
• · hole for determining the full revolution of the media;
• · the hole for positioning the magnetic read/write heads on 3.14-inch media is closed with a metal latch.
• · a hole for central gripping and rotation on the spindle of the disk rotation drive (unlike media with a diameter of 5.25 inches, it is located only on the bottom side of the floppy disk).

Another fundamental innovation for its time was such an operation as formatting. Initially, floppy disks were formatted using special software - quite unusual for today's average person. As a rule, floppy disk manufacturers specified a parameter called the number of dots per inch of the media - TRACK PER INCH (TPI). This parameter said what the maximum density of areas of independent magnetization a carrier can have.

The first disk drives were huge! They were not located inside the system unit, but were located outside. The disk drive was a universal read/write device. Each type of media, as a rule, required its own device - for reading 8", 5" and 3" inch floppy disks. Such a drive consisted of a motor, a media rotation control system, a motor, a read/write head positioning control system, signal generation and conversion circuits and other electronic devices.

It remains to conclude from the above that the development of a regular floppy disk has become one of the most important components of the success of personal computers.

Spring 2016 Russian Academy Sciences (RAN) has announced the conditions for participation in the competition for the distribution of grants for young scientists. One of the requirements for applications: they must be submitted on 3.5 floppy disks, and the file must be created in Word-6. The next day, press secretary of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Sharakshane clarified that the application can be submitted in other ways, including via the Internet. However, floppy disks are actually still used in the scientific community. For example, the Russian publications “Emergency Therapy” and “Department. Dental Education » accepts publications on these media.

In September 2015, engineer Finn Gundersen wrote on his blog that in Norway, doctors receive patient information on floppy disks. Gundersen believes that it is a matter of economy - this is the cheapest medium - and established traditions.

The Secret found out who and how uses outdated media, outdated information transmission technologies and devices, and who makes money from it.

Floppy disks

Eight-inch floppy disks appeared in the early 70s as an innovative development by IBM. Ten years later, Philips and Sony released the optical compact disc. CDs and DVDs began to push floppy disks out of the market. They turned out to be a more durable and versatile medium - magnetic disks often got stuck in drives, became demagnetized, and the variety of encoding formats made them unreadable on devices of different platforms.

Cassette recorders are not currently produced. But in electronics stores you can find players that play audio cassettes and discs at the same time. Among the brands that supply such devices is Sony. The average cost of a player is 4,000 rubles.

Fax

The fax machine was invented in 1843 by Scottish physicist Alexander Bain. It was an electric telegraph capable of transmitting images. In 1924, AT&T created its photo telegraph. For several decades it was actively used in photojournalism, and in 1964 the Xerox company made the fax, which is still used today - the transmission of images began to be carried out over telephone lines.

In the 70s, the fax was the most advanced technology transmission of information, but today Email almost drove fax machines out of the market. Market research firm NPD estimates that Americans bought 350,000 fax machines in 2012, down 14% from 2011. The drop in demand is confirmed by statistics from the Citilink company. Now the store's assortment is represented by one manufacturer - Panasonic. In 2014, fax sales fell by 50% compared to 2013, and in 2015 by another 40%. “The sales volume of faxes in quantitative terms is only a few thousand units per year. But as long as there is demand, faxes will remain in our assortment,” says Pavel Komarov, purchasing director of the electronic discounter Citylink.

Due to the fall in demand, fax manufacturers are trying to hedge their bets by producing fax machines as part of multifunctional devices. In particular, the large electronics manufacturer HP did this. In 2011–2012, 37 million such devices were sold worldwide.

State-owned enterprises and departmental institutions use fax most actively. This forces associated companies to use fax machines. “We receive official requests for information by fax from law enforcement And Federal service of the Russian Federation for drug control as part of their pre-investigation checks and operational investigative activities,” says Oleg Motovilov, commercial director of Caravan. However, no more than six messages can be received per month.

For similar reasons, NPO Rodina has a fax machine. According to Leonid Boguslavsky, first deputy general director companies, most departments, as well as some factories in the Russian Federation still actively use fax. “But as soon as they abandon them, we will immediately leave this practice,” says Boguslavsky.

Pagers

The first commercial version of the pager appeared in 1956, it was released by Motorola. The range reached 200 m, and the number of subscribers was 57 people. The one-way communication device, which allows information to be “quietly” transmitted, has become widespread in police, military units, hospitals and government services.

In the 80s, watch-shaped devices with miniature displays appeared - with the ability to send messages directly. According to Motorola University, in 1992 the total number of pagers in the world was 30 million. The device was used by 6% of the US population and 17% of Singaporeans. Pagers have become especially popular in the business environment. In 1995 in Russia, 80% of transmitted messages were of a business nature, 17–18% were personal, and another 2–3% were appointments and congratulations.

Late 2000s Cell Phones(in particular, thanks to the SMS function) ousted pagers from the market. Beepers have returned to hospitals and fire departments. CEA estimates that 10,000 pagers were purchased in the United States in 2012 at a cost of $7 million.

Today pagers are produced by the French company TPL Systèmes, as well as Canadian companies Rogers, PageNet and Bell. Their main consumers are emergency services. For example, PageNet's clients include about 500 medical institutions. In 2015, by 25.5 million subscribers cellular communications There were 161,500 paging service customers in Canada. However, since 2009, there has been an annual decrease in pager users by an average of 10.7% per year.

Camera roll

In the mid-2000s, when digital cameras became affordable, film manufacturers began to abandon their production en masse. In 2006, three companies announced the suspension of production of traditional cameras - Canon, Nikon and Konica Minolta Holdings. Canon came to a similar decision after analyzing sales - a year earlier, in 2005, it managed to sell 64.8 million digital cameras and only 5.4 million film cameras.