According to Abbreviationfinder, FD stands for Floppy Disk. A disk is a circular element that allows certain data to be recorded. Flexible, on the other hand, is something that can be easily bent (and therefore is not totally rigid).
The idea of a floppy disk refers to a support that is used to store information. It is a circular magnetic sheet that is protected with a rectangular or square plastic cover.
Also known as floppy disks, diskettes or floppy disks, floppy disks were widely used in computers (computers) to store and move digital files. These disks were inserted into the computer through a floppy drive, a device that was used to read and write (record) the floppy disks.
The first floppy disks to become popular were 5 ¼-inch disks with a storage capacity of 1.2 MB, which emerged in the mid-1980s. A few years later, 3 ½-inch floppy disks with a storage capacity of 1.44MB.
On these floppy disks it was possible to store office documents, photographs, computer programs and games, for example. In some cases, the file was split across multiple disks. As of the 21st century, floppy disks fell into disuse due to the development of more advanced technologies, such as CD-ROM, DVD, Blu-ray, USB sticks and online storage, among others.
The low storage capacity (1.44 MB for a 3 ½-inch floppy disk vs. 700 MB for a CD or more than 4 GB for a DVD, both of which double if burned in two layers, without going into the tens gigabytes that Blu-rays can hold) and short wear-and- tear lifespans made floppy disks obsolete. For several years, in fact, the computers that are marketed no longer include a floppy drive.
We must situate ourselves in the historical context to understand the impact that the floppy disk had on the market, more specifically on users who from one day to the next received the possibility of carrying their documents and programs in their pockets. At a time when the Internet did not yet exist and computers were very large and heavy, it was not a good idea to take them from home to the office, or to our friends’ homes to show them our creations, for example.
Although other storage media existed, such as punched cards, their handling and maintenance were much more complicated and delicate processes: the very machine in charge of sorting the cards could fail unexpectedly and destroy them in the blink of an eye. One of the extra advantages of the floppy disk was the presence of a small latch that served to prevent someone from deleting or overwriting the files by mistake.
The fact that today’s computers don’t include floppy drives doesn’t mean that no one uses them. As in all areas, computing has a certain public that loves traditions, which lives in a very particular way its relationship with programs and devices today considered “classic”, and that prevents them from leaving behind these storage disks, however difficult it may be for them to maintain them.
Video games are a young art form, but they have had a very intense history: from their appearance in arcades during the 1970s to the present, they have gone through an unparalleled technological evolution, which has taken them from graphics to pixel basis to the sophisticated three-dimensional images we see every day, whose fidelity brings them ever closer to reality. Given the characteristics of the first titles, it was possible to store them on one or more floppy disks, and purists are not willing to give up this format for convenience.
