Relic of a Bygone Era: Sony to Cease Producing Floppy Drives

Sony has announced it will cease producing 1.44" drives in March, 2011. Demand for 3.5" drives and disks is larger than you might think—some 12 million disks sold in 2009—but it's time to pull the plug on the ancient standard.

Once the workhorse of the computer industry, the floppy disk evolved significantly through the 70s and 80s. When CD-ROM drives and multimedia capabilities arrived in the early 90s, however, pundits began busily predicting the imminent demise of the 3.5" standard while manufacturers poured millions into disk-based product R&D.

As for the 3.5" disk drive, it told both the pundits and the techies to get bent and set about surviving for another twenty years. The humble standard has proven to be a flat, rectangular, and tiny Jason Voorhees

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