Floppy disks, diskettes, flexible disks, floppies... call them what you like. The history of this particular magnetic format is long, and despite being replaced by vastly superior technologies, there is still considerable demand. The main manufacturers abandoned production of diskettes long ago, and although it is still possible to obtain them, we are talking about units with half a decade (or more) sitting in a warehouse, or directly reconditioned. This is what FloppyDisks.com does, a small online company: Rescuing diskettes for reuse.
I still own a limited number of diskettes, and I suppose someday I'd like to create the corresponding backups, since among them there is an original copy of MS-DOS 4.0 distributed by IBM. Personally, diskettes were always problematic. Finding a damaged sector was a nightmare, and they couldn't be easily replaced due to cost.
There was a time when diskettes reached such a high level of production that they became worth pocket change, but time and the evolution of computing took care of displacing them. These days we have portable hard drives, pendrives, and memory cards, thanks to which we've gained capacity, speed, stability, and peace of mind. However, there are people out there who need diskettes... many diskettes.
The video tells us in less than two minutes the story behind FloppyDisk.com, a company located in Lake Forest (California) that very likely is the last in the floppy disk market. Its president, Tom Persky, explains the curious situation of FloppyDisk.com, which combines a bit of “hunting”, a bit of “archaeology”, and a more complex phase that involves erasing data, sorting diskettes, and performing basic tests. FloppyDisk.com is what we call in the jargon a refurbisher or reconditioner. It offers a wide variety of disks, whether in 8, 5.25, or 3.5 inches, and in multiple capacities, formatted or not. The diskettes are purged with a degausser, formatted (if the client asks) according to their parameters, relabeled, and put up for sale.
Who are FloppyDisk's main customers? Its president confirms that he sells units to the US government, since it still has certain applications that require floppy disks. The concept of “if it isn't broken, don't fix it” runs very deep in government agencies, and eight-inch disks controlling nuclear systems are a great example of that. ATMs, old CNC systems, billing and tax processing terminals... in essence, everything that depends on platforms like MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, and Windows 9x needs diskettes by its side. What's the average price? One dollar per diskette, but in other regions they can be obtained for much less.
https://old.neoteo.com/el-boeing-747-usa-discos-floppy-para-sus-actualizaciones/
