HACKER Q&A
📣 behnamoh

Why is there still a market for floppy disks?


Why is there still a market for floppy disks?


  👤 KZerda Accepted Answer ✓
There's still a ton of equipment out there, from industrial CNC machines, to musical gear, to embroidery machines, that were built with floppy drives as the main, if not only, way of interchanging data. Replacing perfectly functional gear like that because the exchange medium is a bit old just doesn't make financial or logical sense in a lot of cases.

👤 PaulHoule
For old devices that use them. I saw an electronic piano the other day that had a 3.5 inch floppy drive.

👤 anfilt
Mainly older industrial equipment that can cost many thousands to replace.

Also nothing is wrong with floppies. The only thing is 1.44MB is a bit small for some things these days.


👤 mariuolo
Legacy devices? Bureaucratic inertia?

I read they're still somewhat popular in Japan.


👤 giantg2
I still have a stack of 3.5" floppies. I don't have a drive for them though. One day my kid will find them and they can be amazed by this 'ancient' tech.

👤 EddieDante
If I just want to give somebody a text file over sneakernet, USB sticks are overkill.