The Floppy
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The Floppy disk drive (FDD) is the oldest PC storage device.
It saves data non-volatile by magnetizing and demagnetizing sections
of one rotating magnetical platter in a removeable floppy (or:
stiffy) disk.
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The FDD is by far the slowest storage device, and it is the one with
least capacity (1.4 MB per stiffy). Moreover, data on a floppy disk is
not very safe indeed; it will neither survive dusty environments nor
magnetisation.
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Until other bootable devices (CD, Zip) became standard the floppy was
the only removeable and bootable device, however. This way it
survived 25 years of computer technology development basically unchanged.
The only reason why it is still everywhere in use is that it is so cheap.
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An LS 120 drive
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The LS 120 drive pictured above looks very much the same like a floppy
drive. Additionally to ordinary stiffies the LS can handle special
120 MB disks. Because they're slow and rather expensive, LS's were not
widely accepted by the customers.
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