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What would you think if in the middle of 2024 we mentioned “floppy disks”? These memory units, so linked to the 80’s and 90’s, became an inseparable companion of those technology geeks of yesteryear, as they were the perfect way to carry with you anywhere you went, all the data you needed. However, although Japan said goodbye to them relatively recently, the truth is that the arrival of hard disks, pen drives and cloud storage dug the grave of diskettes.

The resilience of floppy disks

Even so, the surprising thing is that these drives refuse to disappear. As the TechSpot portal points out in a recent publication, although Sony manufactured its last new diskettes almost fifteen years ago, they are still used by some organizations or users due to two differential factors: on the one hand, nostalgia; on the other, necessity. As an example, they mention the case of Espen Kraft, a musician who uses diskettes to store music samples and perform live, but the truth is that he is not the only one with similar stories.

The United States also continues to use floppy disks

Tom Persky, creator of Floppydisk.com, sells floppy disks to hobbyists and industrial users, a range of profiles that surprisingly includes the airline industry. In 2020, it was confirmed that many airlines were still using floppy diskettes in some popular aircraft such as the Boeing 747-400. In addition, it’s surprising that the Pentagon used 1970s IBM Series-1 computers with floppy disks until 2019.

The relevance of floppy disks today

Thus, incredibly, the floppy disk drive has managed to preserve its presence to this day. Nowadays, making the leap to new systems has high costs and, as if that were not enough, it also requires a large investment of time. In addition, there is also a great advantage related to floppy disks: they are more difficult to hack as they are present in isolated systems. So, if you are wondering whether these drives are still in use, the surprising thing is that the answer is yes.