In Pictures: External Data Storage Through The Ages

I still have my SuperDisk drive, I used it until a few years ago to read old floppies. 750MB was HUGE back then, now it's just a drop in the TerraBuckit.

Where are the portable hard drives?

Wow, so many painful memories. I remember using multiple floppy disks consecutively just to install a single program.

Often people use the phrase, "The good ol' days," but I don't think that applies here." Nevertheless, enjoyable article.

I used to work for a place that had a digital camera that used 3.5in floppies for storage.

I still have my Zip drive. It doesn't work but I have it and all my disks.

I'm still amazed at the fact that the 32GB micro SD card that I purchased for my new phone is smaller than a dime.

Used to use 5.25's too and a real good game could be on 3-5 of those disks too back in the 80's. Cga was heavy stuff i tell ya.

5.25 inch floppies have lived much longer than 1982. I still had such a floppy in 1993 for example - in a newly built 486 computer, side by side with the 3.5 inch floppy.

Also, 3.5 inch floppies reached 2.88 MB. That standard (introduced by IBM) didn't become popular, but it did exist for a while.

Finally, the most important form of external storage today is missing - external HDDs. These go up to 5TB at present IIRC.

USB drives can come with 1TB (at $3000 and in a Victorinox Swiss Army knife)

My Commodore64 used to use common audio tapes before I upgraded to 5.25 floppy disks.

It was really easy to make a copy with a simple double tape recorder.

I remember years ago, when my dad was frustrated that my teacher demanded us to use flash drives instead of floppy disks.

"Floppy disks are so cheap! Why does your teacher dislike it?"


Oh, and we also have a Laserdisc player and a few musical videos featuring the non-CGI old version of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Though the SD card is popular, before that is the Compact Flash standard with two variants. My first digital camera used such.

The infamous Floppy Shuffle! I still recall buying 50 generic 5.25" floppies in a bag from a guy at college in 1987.

Remember the times when windows 95 was on like 15 1.44 floppy disks...installing a windows was quite a workout lol