TheSuperDisk LS-120 is a high-speed, high-capacity alternative to the 90 mm (3.5 in), 1.44 MBfloppy disk. The SuperDisk hardware was created by3M's storage products groupImation in 1996,[1] with manufacturing chiefly byMatsushita.
The SuperDisk had little success in North America; withCompaq,Gateway andDell being three of only a fewOEMs who supported it. It was more successful in Asia and Australia, where the majority of second-generationSuperDisk LS-240 drives and disks were released. There was one model of LS-240 drive released in North America, by QPS.
The widespread introduction of rewritableCD-ROMs around the same time undermined the role for the SuperDisk. SuperDisk worldwide ceased manufacturing in 2003.
The design of the SuperDisk system came from an early 1990s project atIomega. It is one of the last examples offloptical technology, wherelasers are used to guide a magnetic head which is much smaller than those used in traditional floppy disk drives. Iomega orphaned the project around the time they decided to release theZip drive in 1994. The idea eventually ended up at 3M, where the concept was refined and the design was licensed to established floppy drive makersMatsushita andMitsubishi. Other companies involved in the development of SuperDisk include Compaq and OR Technology.[2]
Matsushita continued development of the technology and released the LS-240. It has double the capacity of the LS-120 and the added feature of being able toformat regular floppy disks to 32 MB capacity.[3] However, this higher density comes at a price – the entire disk must be rewritten any time a change is made, much like earlyCD-RW media.
A SuperDisk drive was used in two Panasonicdigital cameras, the PV-SD4090[4] and PV-SD5000,[5] which allowed them to use both SuperDisk (LS-120) and 3.5″ floppy disks as thememory media.[citation needed]
The SuperDisk's format was designed to supersede the low-capacity 3½-inch floppy disks with its higher-capacity media that imitated the ubiquitous format with its own 120 MB (and later 240 MB) disk storage while the SuperDisk drive itself was backwards compatible with 1.44 MB, 1.2 MB, 720 KB floppy formats (MFM). Superdisk drives read and write faster to these sorts of disks than conventional 1.44 MB or 720 KB floppy drives.[6][7]
The newer LS-240 drives also have the ability to read and write regular 1.44 MB floppies at much higher densities in a format called "FD32MB". Described in thehelp file for the SuperWriter32 application included with the driver package, the increase of capacity for FD32MB is achieved through the use ofshingled magnetic recording (SMR) to reduce track pitch to 18.8μm from the standard 187.5μm, allowing 777 tracks per side. This is combined with linear recording density improvements enabling 36-53 sectors per track throughpartial-response maximum-likelihood andzone bit recording.[citation needed]
The true capacity of these "SD120MB" drives[8] is 120.375MiB aka 126.22 MB (FAT16B with logical geometry 963/8/32CHS × 512 bytes). The "SD240MB" drives have a capacity of 229.25 MiB aka 240.39 MB (FAT16B with logical geometry 262/32/56 CHS × 512 bytes). 1.44 MB HD floppies formatted to 32 MB as "FD32MB" (FAT16B with logical geometry 1024/2/32 CHS × 512 bytes) in the LS-240 show a dummyFAT12 file system (with logical geometries 160/2/9 or 80/2/18) when inserted into a normal floppy drive.[citation needed]
SuperDisk drives have been sold inparallel port,USB,ATAPI andSCSI variants.[7]
Imation also released a version of the SuperDisk with "Secured Encryption Technology", which usesBlowfish with a 64-bit key to encrypt the contents.[citation needed]
UnderWindows XP'ssfloppy.sysdriver, a USB SuperDisk drive will appear as a 3.5″ floppy disk drive, receiving either the drive letter A: (if there is no floppy in the machine) or B: (if there already is one). This enables use by software that expects a floppy drive when 1.44 MB or 720 KB disks are inserted. 120 MB and 240 MB disks are also accessed via A: or B:.[9]
Older 800KB and 400KBMacintosh floppies, usingGCR, did not work with a SuperDisk drive. These disks could be used in a SuperDisk drive only if formatted to PC 720 KB MFM format. Note that almost no USB floppy drives supported Mac GCR floppies.[citation needed]
The biggest hurdle standing in the way of success was that Iomega'sZip drive had been out for three years when SuperDisk had been released. Zip had enough popularity to leave the public mostly uninterested in SuperDisk, despite its superior design and its compatibility with the standard floppy disk.[citation needed]
By 2000, the entire removable magnetic disk category was finally obsoleted by the falling prices ofCD-R andCD-RW drives, and later onsolid-state (USB flash drives or USB keydrives). Over the next few years, SuperDisk was quietly discontinued, even in areas where it was popular. Today, disks are very hard to find.[citation needed]
The USB models were quite popular for debugging and installing servers that did not have a CD drive available. They could both store massive numbers of drivers for installation purposes as well as be used to run live operating systems, such asReactOS, which amounts to 150 MB.[citation needed]
OR Computers is still involved in marketing the Insite technology, ...
The SuperDisk drive spins at 2.4 times the speed of a standard drive, and its transfer rate is over 12 times faster than a standard 1.44 MB high-density disk drive
Media related toSuperDisk at Wikimedia Commons