SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Floppy disks -- who needs 'em? They're not practical for storing digital photos, MP3 compressed music files or any of the other accoutrements of the digital lifestyle. They don't ...

About a week ago, Linus Torvalds made a software commit which has an air about it of the end of an era. The code in question contains a few patches to the driver for native floppy disc controllers.

Invented by Alan Shugart at IBM in 1967, the original floppy disk design measured 8 inches (200mm) in diameter, stored 80KB of data and became available for purchase in 1971 as a part of IBM's ...

Nowadays, if you want to transfer a file from one computer to another, you’d just send it over the network. In those rare occasions where that won’t work, a USB thumb drive will do. It wasn’t always ...

It was an obscure government report, but it contained a tidbit that went viral immediately: in May, 2016, a white paper released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office on the need for federal ...

No matter what the size—eight-inch, 5 1/4-inch, 3 1/2-inch—floppy disks are the most iconic symbols of old-school computing. But how do they actually work? The 8-Bit Guy spends 15 minutes breaking ...

Data storage mechanisms have come a long way since IBM proudly introduced the first "memory disk" in 1971. By the end of the '70s, a number of manufacturers were churning out 5.25-in. floppy disks.

Tokyo — With its azure ocean views and terraced rice paddies, the city of Hamada, population 50,000, is far from Japan's major urban centers of Tokyo and Osaka. But Hamada is no digital slouch. Just ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Gil Press writes about technology, entrepreneurs and innovation. This week’s milestones in the history of technology include the ...