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I was surprised the story claimed that 3.5" disks weren't "floppy", just based on their external shell. EDIT: Back when they were in common use, I remember tha
by CoastalCoder 2y ago
I was surprised the story claimed that 3.5" disks weren't "floppy", just based on their external shell.
EDIT: Back when they were in common use, I remember that computer people generally called them "3.5 inch floppy disks", and non-computer called them "hard disks". Which caused some initial confusion because computer people meant something else by "hard disk".
It looks like there's still some debate about the ambiguity of the terms: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/335352/what-s-so-floppy-about-floppy-disks https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/335352/what-s-so...
- nullhole 2y agoWell, 5 1/4" disks were floppy on the inside & outside, so compared with them, 3.5" disks weren't floppy. To me, at least, the name 'floppy disk' already felt like an anachronism, even in the heyday of 3.5" disks.
- temp0826 2y agoI don't think they were as long-lived as their brethren, but can't forget about the extra floppy 8-inchers!
- drewzero1 2y agoI found one of those in a folder at work a few months ago and was surprised how extra-floppy it was. I grew up with mostly 3 1/2” diskettes and some 5 1/4” disks, so the "floppy" name always seemed like a bit of a stretch. Seeing an 8" disk really made more sense why they called it that. (Eight inches was a really clever size for storage in a paper-based office environment... It fits just right in a spot meant for a sheet of letter or A4!)
- julian_t 2y agoA South African colleague of mine reasoned that if 5.25" disks were "floppies", then the 3.5" ones must be "stiffies". Somehow this never caught on at work.
- edward28 2y agoHey, my stiffies' average size.
- RF_Savage 2y agoHere in Finland the terms for 3.5" floppies is "korppu", a type of hard biscuit, do distinguish them from "lerppu" "floppy", which refers to the older 5 1/4" discs that actually flopped around.
- IshKebab 2y agoThey aren't floppy. They're just called that because old disks really were floppy and the name stuck.
- marcosdumay 2y agoIf you open one, you'll see that the disk is floppy. As floppy as the larger versions of it.
- IshKebab 2y agoI know but the whole thing isn't floppy. The earlier ones were called floppy disks because the whole thing was floppy, including the case. You could literally bend them.
- marcosdumay 2y agoIf you are going that way, the whole thing isn't a disk either. And it wasn't a disk on the previous model either. Hard disks on the other hand, had hard disks. While the whole thing was way more rigid than a 3 1/2 floppy, and hasn't been a disk since they started selling it.
- Clubber 2y agoFloppy square. I still have some old floppy squares in a closet somewhere.
- drewzero1 2y agoThe only person I ever heard call them "hard disks" was as a joke in a cartoon[1]. Non-computer people I knew called them stuff like "little floppies" to distinguish them from the big 5 1/4" ones. Windows used "floppy" for both in the file manager. 1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wKnLBNS9jDw&t=1m8s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wKnLBNS9jDw&t=1m8s