The last new five and a quarter inch disk format came to the marketplace in 1986. The 5.25-inch floppy diskette was introduced by Shugart in 1976 and several varieties were produced. The liner also helps to keep the diskette surfaces clean by removing any dust and other kinds of debris when the disk spins. This reduces friction because when the disk is being read or written on, it is spinning and the magnetic heads are in contact with the disk surface. The inner portion of the vinyl jacket contains a woven liner with a lubricant. Information on proper floppy storage and handling is provided at the disk storage page.Īlthough the vinyl jacket is sealed so that the disk cannot be easily removed from its enclosure, a certain area of the floppy disk is exposed via cut-outs in the jacket so that the magnetic heads can read or write information to the disc. The presence of debris on the disk can lead to scratches on the disks and lost data, damage or contamination of the magnetic heads in the floppy drive, or simply errors when the floppy disc is read. The purpose of this jacket is to keep fingerprints off the disk surfaces and to limit the amount of dust and debris that gets on the diskette surfaces. This diskette is housed in a flexible vinyl plastic enclosure or jacket. It is difficult to find working eight inch drives nowadays and of course, no new 8-inch floppy disks are being produced. The use of the 8-inch format continued up until the late 1980s. Different versions of the 8-inch disk format continued to be introduced until about 1977. In 1972 the 8-inch read/write disk was developed. The first read only disk was introduced in 1971 by IBM and was eight inches in size. Later more formats were introduced as shown and discussed below. This first drive was for 8-inch floppy disks and was a read only drive. It all began in 1967 when the floppy disk drive was invented by Shugart at IBM. These magnetic disks have a long history. More information on the disk structure is provided here. The term floppy is used because the actual disk that stores the digital information is a round and thin flexible disk.

Unlike optical discs that are recorded and read with the light from a laser, floppy discs are read with magnetic heads. A floppy disk or diskette is a format that is used to store digital information.

Cant read 3.5 floppy disk formats