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List of floppy disk formats

Wikimedia list article

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ6620529 ↗
Source-derived summary

This is a list of different floppy disk formats.

Physical formats

Logical formats

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, many different logical disk formats were used, depending on the hardware platform.

See also

Zip drive (floppy-like, but incompatible medium using different technology)

PocketZip (floppy-like, but incompatible medium using different technology)

SuperDisk (floppy-like with drives also compatible with 3.5" floppy disks)

Magneto-optical drive (floppy-like, but incompatible medium using different technology)

List_of_Ecma_standards (ECMA standards 54, 59, 66, 69, 70, 78, 99, 100, 125 and 147)

Notes

References

The IBM Diskette General Information Manual (PDF). Product Reference Literature (Fifth ed.). IBM. August 1979.

"RX02 8 inch Floppy Drive Information". David Gesswein. Retrieved September 21, 2007.

"8 inch floppy disks". University of Amsterdam.

Editorial summary

“List of floppy disk formats” enters the record as wikimedia list article. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what List, floppy and disk can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1979, 2007—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around List, floppy and disk.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“List of floppy disk formats” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, List, floppy and disk provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6620529. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1979 and 2007.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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  2. Expand the search: follow List of floppy disk formats primary sources, List of floppy disk formats archive and List research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “List of floppy disk formats” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.