Talk:Floppy disk

3.5" floppy

On the reverse side of 3.5" floppies (opposite of the label side), there's an oblong indentation under the write-protect icons. It looks like it might be for a label but it's not clear what the function of this actually is. What is the function of this feature? ~2026-14255-03 (talk) 18:59, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Could you indicate where on the picture, maybe with the numbered arrows? I believe some are related to the insertion system. Gah4 (talk) 03:55, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

The magnetic coating's material for DD 3.5" floppy appears to be wrong.

"Typical 3.5 in (90 mm) disk magnetic coating materials are:

• DD: 2 μm magnetic iron oxide
• HD: 1.2 μm cobalt-doped iron oxide
• ED: 3 μm barium ferrite"

DSDD 3.5" floppies (720K) appear to be made with cobalt too. Source 64 is either wrong or forgot to specify that it also contains cobalt for 3.5" floppies.

This site is used as a source on the wiki page: List of floppy disks formats: https://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/drive.html#data

"media: DD media is cobalt, 665 oersteds at 720K (1MB? unformatted); longitudinal recording;"

So something doesn't add up there. Both sources cannot be true at the same time. Nintenloup (talk) 17:42, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Biased Sentence in Legacy Section

I think this sentence is biased/opinionated; Wikipedia is supposed to be an information site.

I'm seeing:

Unlike hard disks, floppy disks were handled and seen; even a novice user could identify a floppy disk.

I'm going to change this; anyone feel free to comment on my new sentence U1user1U (talk) 22:18, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

IMPL

Should we mention that floppy disks were originally designed for IMPL on IBM System/370 processors, storing microcode? Gah4 (talk) 03:57, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

It's pretty well covered in Origin as a read-only floppy disk; not sure it is worth adding to an already long article Tom94022 (talk) 06:33, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Is claim drivers are no longer included in windows accurate?

The claim "Windows 10 and Windows 11 no longer come with drivers for floppy disk drives (both internal and external). However, they will still support them with a separate device driver provided by Microsoft" seems tenuous based on the wording about drivers in the cited article; quote as of time of writing "If you have an old physical Floppy Drive that you can attach to your device, then you will need to download the latest driver from the Windows Update website to use it with Windows 10." This quote does not explicitly say that drivers aren't included and comes across as a generic statement made by the writer to "cover the bases" so to speak.

I'm having trouble finding any hard evidence that windows does not include floppy drivers out of the box. ~2026-38532-42 (talk) 10:02, 6 July 2026 (UTC)