Obsolete, but not gone: The people who won't give up floppy disks

The last floppy disk was made over a decade ago and doesn't even have enough capacity to store a modern smart phone picture, so why do some people still love using them? When an idea for a new piece of music begins swirling in Espen Kraft's mind, he turns to one of his many boxes of floppy disks. Flipping open the lid, the musician and YouTuber from Norway stares down at rows of colourful plastic squares inside. His fingers browse across them, as fast as lightning. "Bass sound from Moog" reads one label. Just what Kraft was looking for. He plucks the disk out and slams it into his synthesizer. As the machine embraces it, there are clunky yet reassuring noises. This part, Kraft says, is where the magic happens. The sample is almost ready to play but not quite – it's the anticipation as it loads that sparks a certain nostalgia, what Kraft calls, "a nice, warm, cosy place". The idea is flowing now. He presses a key. His ears fill with sound. If you remember a time when using floppy disks didn't seem weird, you're probably at least 30 years old. Floppy disks or diskettes emerged around 1970 and, for a good three decades or so, they were the main way many people stored and backed up their computer data. All the software and programmes they bought came loaded onto clusters of these disks. They are a technology from a different era of computing, but for various reasons floppy disks have an enduring appeal for some which mean they are from dead. The original 8in (20cm) and 5.25in (13cm) floppy disks were actually floppy – you could bend them slightly without harming the magnetic material inside. But the later 3.5in (8.75cm) disks were arguably the most successful. It is these that came to be immortalised as the "Save" icon in many computer applications even today. The 3.5in disks, which Espen Kraft uses, are small and rigid, not actually floppy, but that means they are both more robust and easier to store. With the dawn of the 21st Century, however, for most computer users, floppy disks were on their way out – increasingly supplanted by writeable CDs and thumb drives. And now, cloud storage is ubiquitous. The most widely used type of floppy, with a maximum capacity of less than three megabytes, can hardly compete. Unless you are in love with them – and some people are. There are also those who depend on them. Various legacy industrial and government systems around the world still use floppy disks. Even some city transport systems run on them. And while these users are slowly dying out, a handful cling on, despite the fact that the last brand new floppy disk manufactured by Sony was back in 2011. No-one makes them anymore, meaning there is a finite number of floppy disks in the world – a scattered resource that is gradually dwindling. One day, they might disappear entirely. But not yet.