Floppy disk

Diskettes were a popular medium of storing information in the 1970's up until the 1990's. They were cheap to manufacture, and duplicate. Unlike tapes, they are random access, and the media isn't rigid unlike hard disks, giving them the common name of 'floppy diskettes'.

As time went on the form factor of diskettes continued to shrink from 8" to 5 1/4", to 3 1/2".

8" diskettes

[Image:8inch diskette.jpg|200px|thumb|right|An 8" diskette] 8" disks were popular in the 1970's and could be found in consoles on mini computers (DEC's), mainframe controllers, and even down to CP/M computers. Capacities go from 79kb up to a 1.2MB capacity.

5 1/4" diskettes

[Image:5 on quarter inch diskette collage.jpg|200px|thumb|right|An 5 1/4" diskett collage] These disks were immensly popular back in the day with the low density variation being used in Apple, Atari, Commodore, and IBM compatible computers. Capacities ranged from 160kb up to 1.2MB for the high density disks

3 1/2" diskettes

[Image:3 1half diskette.jpg|200px|thumb|right|A 3 1/3" diskette] If I remember right, the original Mac was the first mainstream machine to ship with the 3 1/2" disk, with a formatted capacity of 400KB as it was single sided. Capacities went up to 2.88MB.