Before gigabytes and the cloud set the standard, files were measured in megabytes and had to be adhered to a very specific limit: 1.44 MB. That was the capacity of 3.5-inch floppy disks, the standard medium in the 1990s for moving information between computers.
Although it became a reference figure, in reality it did not exactly represent the actual space available, but rather a convention that ended up being adopted throughout the world.
During that decade, floppy disks were essential because They were used to save documents, school work, install programs or store games. Its small space forced files to be compressed or divided into several parts.
There is no doubt that this format marked millions of people, at a time when every megabyte stored on the floppy disk was pure goldand which today reveals the technological limits of those years.
The origin of the 1.44 MB on floppy disks
The 3.5-inch floppy disk was developed by Sony in 1981 as an evolution of the 5.25-inch diskette. His rigid casing with metal lid made it more resistant to dust and fingerprints, a detail that made the difference compared to previous formats.
However, it was not until 1987, when IBM adopted it in its PS/2 line, that established itself as the universal portable storage support.
As for the figure of 1.44 MB, it has a technical origin that is explained with simple numbers. And it is that a high-density floppy disk could store data on 80 tracks per side, with two recordable sides and 18 sectors per track.
Each sector contained 512 bytes, multiplying everything, it gave 1,474,560 bytes. If the binary system was applied, that was equivalent to about 1.41 megabytes, but The manufacturers decided to round, so they converted first in kilobytes using 1,024, and then in megabytes using 1,000 instead of 1,024.
It was in this way that the 1.44 MB on the floppy disk was born, a hybrid figure between binary and decimal calculation. Although it was not an exact storage capacity, in the end it was easier to remember and easier to sell on the market.
The 1.44 MB floppy disk was the most durable standard in those years, but not the only one. And before there were versions of 360 KB and 720 KB respectively, and later an attempt was made to expand the capacity to 2.88 MB, although without success.
It should be noted that the format coexisted for years with 5.25-inch discs and other minor attempts, but ended up prevailing thanks to its small size and protective casing. The decline came quickly with the help of CD-ROMs, with their 650 MB, they made ridiculous the limited capacity of the floppy disk.
Later ZIP drives appeared and, finally, USB sticks, which They offered tens of megabytes, gigabytes and transfer speeds very superior. In 2011, Sony stopped manufacturing floppy disks, marking the official end of a format that had defined computing for more than two decades.
Before and after the floppy disk
Before the reign of the floppy disk, storing data was a complex task where magnetic tapes were usedpunched cards, and the fragile 8-inch and 5.25-inch floppy disks. Each medium had its physical limitations and cost, which made transferring information a slow process.
After the floppy disk, the leap was radical, first CDs and DVDs, then pen drives and, finally, the cloud, changed the way we save and share informationso we go from thinking in megabytes to talking about gigabytes and terabytes.
Today, a simple update of an app on Android or iOS can take up more than 100 MB, that is, the equivalent of seventy floppy disks, which is wonderful. That comparison is enough to understand how tiny that 1.44 MB limit from the 1990s seems now.
The 3.5-inch floppy disk was never exactly 1.44 MB, it was a technical and marketing convention that ended up setting the pace of digitization. Its limitation forced programmers and users to squeeze every byte, while its square shape became an icon that we still recognize.