

A high-density version, released in 1987, could store 1.44 MB of data and became the standard for the next decade. The original Apple Macintosh included a built-in, 3.5-inch 400 KB floppy drive and helped popularize the format. 3.5-inch disks used a hard plastic case instead of a flexible one, making them more durable.

Smaller 3.5-inch floppy disks eventually became more popular than the larger diskettes. Early versions could store 360 KB, while later revisions could store 1.2 MB. Smaller, consumer-friendly 5.25-inch floppy disks were the first that became popular among home computer users. The first floppy disks were 8 inches in diameter, read-only, and held 80 KB of data they primarily replaced punch cards for shipping data updates to mainframes. Computers of the time usually included at least one floppy disk drive (FDD) to read and write data from floppy disks. Floppy disks contained a thin, flexible disk coated with iron oxide that stored data magnetically like a hard disk. They were available in multiple sizes and capacities, including 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch versions. A floppy disk was a removable data storage disk commonly used in the 1980s and 1990s.
