The navigation system on his friend’s fishing boat had died and was replaced. But the old waypoints were stored on a 3-1/2 inch floppy disk that was unreadable on a normal PC.

For those who don't know here's what a floppy disk is: a hard plastic square that encloses a softer, film-like disk. In the center, a hole or metal disk with holes allows a computer or other ...

In 1981, the IBM PC debuted with the 5.25-inch floppy disk drive. The disks looked like exact albeit smaller replicas of 8-inch disks, and they were just as open to the elements.

The floppy disk’s portability, accessibility and low cost meant that it helped fuel the home computer revolution of the late 1970s. As time passed and technology improved, floppy disks became ...

The 3.5in disks, which Espen Kraft uses, are small and rigid, not actually floppy, but that means they are both more robust and easier to store.

CARR: Yes. I mean, you know, the save icon, for example, that we see on a lot of word processing is, you know, an old floppy disk.

Floppy disks were ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s, transferring software and backing up documents. Before the advent of hard drives, they also stored operating systems, applications and other data.

Mechanical hard drives have proven a resilient storage medium over the years, just as floppy disks once were, before USB flash drives eventually took the baton.

As a fan of music, this is pretty cool. Polish engineer Paweł Zadrożniak has created a “PC hardware orchestra” that plays tunes through floppy disks and other computer hardware parts. The Floppotron 3 ...