Home »History »History (1976): 5.25-Inch Minifloppy Disk
Thisarticle was published by theMuseum of Obsolete Media.
5.25-inch minifloppy disk (1976-early 1990s)
The 5.25-inch floppy disk (or minifloppy) was a magnetic disk format introduced by Shugart Associates in 1976, as areplacement for the 8-inch floppy disk that was considered too large for newer desktop machines.
Like the 8-inch floppy, the 5.25-inch disk consisted of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removed dust particles.
Write protection was carried out by affixing an adhesive tab.
By 1978 a number of manufacturers were producing disks, in competing formats including hard and soft-sector versions, and different encoding schemes.
Initially, 5.25-inch disks had a capacity of 110KB, with a double-density disk introduced in 1978 with a capacity of 360KB, and quad-density introduced in the early 1980s with a capacity of 720KB.
In 1984, IBM introduced the high-density 1.2MB disk in its PC AT, but by the time of the launch of the PS/2 line in 1987 moved to 3.5-inch floppy disks, as Apple had already done with its Macintosh line in 1984.
By 1988 the 3.5-inch was outselling it, and by the mid-1990s the 5.25-inch disk had virtually disappeared, and there was no option to purchase Windows 95 on 5.25-inch disks.
All disks were coated on both sides whether single or double-sided, but only double-sided disks were certified error-free on both sides of the media. However, it was possible to use both sides of a single-sided disk in single-sided drives, by making or buying so-called ‘flippy’ disks.
More expensive dual-head drives which could read both sides of the disk without turning it over were later produced, and eventually became used universally.
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