Nostalgia for physical media often makes us smile – who among us doesn’t remember the sound of reading a floppy disk or making a song selection on a cassette before going for a walk? However, not so long ago we were worried about whether the same floppy disk would have enough space for a new version of the program, and today we have a smartphone with hundreds of gigabytes in our pocket. In this article, we’ll take a look at the development of floppy disks, cassettes, optical disks, and flash drives, and look to the future to see what might replace modern technologies.

Floppy disks and cassettes

Floppy disks used to be a universal way to transfer several hundred kilobytes of information. Today, their capacity is something to joke about. Again, in the 1980s and 1990s, they were indispensable, and IBM 8-inch and later 3.5-inch floppy disks were used in personal computers and in equipment in various industries.

Just imagine yourself in these years, booting a program from a palm-sized floppy disk, watching the indicator closely while the head reads the magnetic layer. 1.44 MB on a 3.5″ is too small now, but back then it was enough to transfer documents between computers, install programs/games, and back up. IBM and Sony made a significant breakthrough, as more than 5 billion floppy disks were sold annually in the mid-1990s. Some systems remained dependent on these media even in the 21st century – aviation and medical devices sometimes worked with floppy disks because of their stability. But with limited capacity, slowness, and physical obsolescence, floppy disks began to be replaced.

Cassettes (audio cassettes, data cassettes for early computers) seemed to be an affordable medium for even longer, but each load could take quite a while, and the risk of failure due to a bad tape hindered reliability. As faster and larger storage solutions became available, cassettes became a subject of interest only for retro enthusiasts who appreciate the unique sound of analog film.

CD/DVD compact discs

The time of optics has come – CDs (about 700 MB) and later DVDs (4.7-8.5 GB) allowed us to store much more data. Do you remember when you used to buy albums on CD or movies on DVD? Nowadays, people prefer instant access (music/video streaming, cloud photo banks) rather than buying and storing disks. As a result, sales of disks have fallen, and drives have disappeared from laptops and many PCs. Nevertheless, they remain in some areas: archiving important data, collecting music releases, or for offline system recovery. But their role is shrinking, as both their recording speed and ease of access cannot compete with flash drives or the cloud.

Flash media and cloud storage

USB flash drives have changed the situation even more: portable, fairly reliable, and increasingly large (a small device with tens or even hundreds of gigabytes in your pocket). They have easily replaced floppy disks and CDs in everyday file sharing. However, even flash drives are subject to limitations due to the risk of loss, breakage, short write/rewrite life, and security issues when transferring confidential data. They are still useful in the absence of the Internet, but it is clear that their daily role is gradually decreasing.

Moreover, file sharing is now increasingly taking place through cloud services, as it means instant access from any device, automatic backups, and collaboration. According to data, more than 2.3 billion people will already use personal cloud storage in 2025. Today, they (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud, etc.) have literally become the standard. Photos, documents, phone backups – everything is stored online. Due to the growth of data volumes (up to 200 zettabytes) and the need for remote access, the cloud has become a must-have tool for both ordinary users and businesses.

Where to next? Future storage technologies

Silica project (quartz glass). Microsoft is experimenting with recording data in the thickness of transparent quartz using ultrafast lasers. Plates the size of a cup holder can store terabytes of data for thousands of years without the need for constant power. This is ideal for archives, but so far it is only available in laboratories. For example, they are already storing the movie Superman on glass, testing endurance in extreme conditions.

Optical storage 5D. Scientists are creating technologies that record data in glass in five dimensions (three spatial dimensions plus the polarization and position of nanostructures). Due to its impressive density (hundreds of terabytes per disk) and durability (possibly billions of years), this idea is very promising for preserving historical and scientific information.

DNA storage. Studies show that a gram of DNA can store tens of petabytes of data, and the stability of the molecule guarantees the preservation of information for hundreds of years under the right conditions. Currently, the high cost of the compound hinders its use, but gradual reduction in price could pave the way for archiving the most important data of mankind.

Quantum materials of the future. Promising research in the field of quantum storage devices should provide us with incredible speeds and volumes of data, but they are still far from being widely used.

Tips for users

As we mentioned earlier, physical media is gradually losing importance in everyday life: we rarely buy disks or flash drives – everything is in the cloud. However, we can’t completely abandon local storage, because there is still some need for offline access and secure archives.

1. Nostalgia versus practicality. If you have floppy disks or cassettes with valuable data/memories, we recommend that you plan to transfer them: digitize the audio from the cassettes, transfer the files from the floppy to a modern medium or the cloud before the old medium finally fails.
2. Local backups. Even with the cloud, you should have a copy on an SSD or external disk.
3. Choose the cloud wisely. Check the provider’s encryption and data storage and deletion policies. For confidential archives, it is better to combine on-premises/cloud options.
4. Keep an eye on new technologies. If you are engaged in long-term archiving (scientific data, family histories, etc.), then follow the development of glass and DNA technologies. Yes, they are not yet available on a mass scale, but in the future, they are likely to become the standard for preserving important information.

In the end, although we no longer carry floppy disks in our pockets or pop a cassette into a record player, it is the history of these technologies that shows us where progress is headed. Each step was not just a simple technological leap, but part of the great human dream of defeating time. Today we are on the threshold of an incredible future where our knowledge will be literally engraved in glass or encoded in our DNA to preserve the history of civilization for thousands of years.