Did you grow up with hard disks or floppy disks?

Posted by ChalkDstTorture@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 1200 comments

Did you grow up with hard disks or floppy disks?

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1200 Comments

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GundamZero83@reddit

Yes

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margittwen@reddit

All of them. And my parents have a box of blank floppy discs that they won’t get rid of “in case they need them someday” lol.

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UniqueEnigma121@reddit

They might😂

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rpm646@reddit

B&W TV

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Roxygirl40@reddit

Yes

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Roxygirl40@reddit

Yes

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djp70117@reddit

Both.

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LabradorDeceiver@reddit

Started out with the 5.25's; I did see a computer that used the 8's once. Didn't bump up to the 3.5's until college, though they were in common use by then. Never used cassettes.

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xavier120@reddit

Yes

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Nordicdba@reddit

Not to be that guy, ok I’m going to be that guy. The 3.5 are also floppy disks just inside a hard shell. A hard disk would be the drive inside the computer which consisted of a hard disk similar to a CD. Now to answer your question, I used 5.25 and 3.5 growing up.

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

I had no idea. I remembered it as hard disks not existing on early computers (I grew up with Macs), so we called the little 3.5 guys the hard disks. Sounds like that's incorrect?

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OptimisticToaster@reddit

If you have one, break it apart and you'll see just how floppy the interior disk was.

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loquacious_avenger@reddit

you can slide the silver part over and see the disc inside- no need to break it

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OptimisticToaster@reddit

Do you take the fun out of everything? :-) Yes, I suppose your plan would work too. I guess it seemed to me the disk is more useful to tear apart and see the guts rather than actually keep it usable.

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loquacious_avenger@reddit

I’m a natural fidgeter, and was always playing with that sliding part as a kid. If you’re more of a smasher, go for it!

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aspacelot@reddit

Everything’s floppy if you’re strong enough

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mschr493@reddit

But what if I still want to play Chip's Challenge?

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GnarlyHeadStudios@reddit

Macs had hard disks. So did PCs. They also had 3.5” and 5.25” floppies (the disk is not the container it’s in, it’s the disk inside, both 2.5” and 5.25” disks are thin and floppy, hard disks used larger metal platters).

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Longjumping-Claim783@reddit

Early computers booted the OS off a disk. I remember doing it with an early PC clone and an Apple II

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GnarlyHeadStudios@reddit

Yes, I am aware. I grew up with Apple II, Commodore 64, and IBM XT (the XT had a 10MB hard drive, however).

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philnolan3d@reddit

Not all PCs had them but all macs did. My first PC didn't have one. Only 2 floppy drives.

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SoRacked@reddit

I grew up with cassette tapes.... On a Vic 20. Yes.. It recorded to cassette.

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_sdm_@reddit

I remember it the same as you. And I also remember being very confused when we got our first home computer with a hard drive in 1992 - a whopping 25MB.

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DYTTrampolineCowboy@reddit

I was just poking through a 1993 Macworld magazine over on archive.org, and in the issue, Lacie is advertising a 1GB external hard drive for the low, low price of ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS.

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ingloriousdmk@reddit

I remember my dad replacing our old hard drive with a 1Gb drive and crowing "we'll never fill that drive up in a million years!"

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Koil_ting@reddit

Damn, crazy how the tech advances because our first home computer in 95 had a 1000MB hard drive, and 16 MBs of RAM, floppy drive and a 4X CDROM drive. Unrelated to space it also had Pentium CPU clocked at 100 MHZ, and probably a soundblaster 16 sound card.

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UniqueEnigma121@reddit

Soundblaster was amazing👍

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UniqueEnigma121@reddit

My first 286, 1MB ram CGA😂

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Gustav55@reddit

Our computer teacher would wave around the disk and say "this is a floppy disk" as it flopped around and then wave the hard disk and say "see not floppy"

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n0exit@reddit

My computer teacher taught us that we should only move the mouse in straight lines because going in circles (like the Macintosh tutorial showed) would wear it out. Not all computer teachers were very smart.

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philnolan3d@reddit

Hard disks are kind of big and heavy to wave around.

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Gustav55@reddit

I'm just telling what our computer teacher said, the 3.5 were called hard disk because they were hard and floppy disk were floppy.

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app_generated_name@reddit

A CD or DVD are hard disks. As in the disk itself is, well, hard. The 3.5 has the same floppy material used to store the data.

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winkman@reddit

Hard disk is your write drive...your HDD. It's metal, so it's a "hard" disk. These are all floppy disks.

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philnolan3d@reddit

All macs had hard disks. The one inside the computer is HDD, Hard Disk Drive.

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5N4K3ii@reddit

You're not wrong that early computers didn't have hard drives, but that's earlier than Macs. You're talking Tandy, C64, Atari 400, Apple IIc, etc. Those computers had tape drives, floppy drives, cartridges, or no permanent storage at all. Hard disks/hard drives of this era like the MacIntosh had were not ejectable. If it ejected, it was a floppy disk despite the hard shell and the HD (short for high density).

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Nordicdba@reddit

It is a very common mistake, I took all the computer classes in high school that I could. One of my teachers would correct us every time we said it wrong.

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buckdancerschoice@reddit

Same experience. When our class transitioned from the actual floppy black disk to the one with the hard case we all called them hard disks and were corrected every time. I didn’t get it at the time. To this day even though I know they’re all floppy disks I still want to call it a hard disk.

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HerbertoPhoto@reddit

It was explained to me that inside that plastic case was a floppy disk, just like the softer ones had, whereas a hard disk has a metal plate inside. It wasn’t about the outer casing. I had a family of computer nerds though.

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QuercusSambucus@reddit

If you pull back the metal slidy bit it's very clear there's a floppy plastic disc inside, just like the 8" or 5.25" versions.

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fitzbuhn@reddit

I remember being confused by it as well - this floppy is hard but this floppy is floppy! tf

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

I’m also over literal. That could be playing into this more than I realized

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Cisru711@reddit

The small ones were called hard disks at times to distinguish them from the 5.25s. Don't let the pedantic ones here give you a hard time about it.

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Thanks. I just texted my sister to see if I was going crazy, she said the same thing as you

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Guacisextra__@reddit

Yes, the picture is at three different types of floppy discs. The thing in your computer is a hard drive.

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NotTroy@reddit

Yeah, it's an easy mistake to make for the average person. They were all called floppy. For one reason, calling the smaller ones "hard disks" would have been VERY confusing, as the long-term internal storage of a computer was / is called a "hard disk drive", commonly shortened to "hard drive".

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Acceptingoptimist@reddit

It's because hard drives were actual thick metal discs that spun inside the machine. So hard disc and hard drive were synonymous. Floppy discs, even inside the 3.5 shells were still super thin (floppy) discs that spun.

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itsasnowconemachine@reddit

Remember having to manually "park" the hard disk?

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Nordicdba@reddit

I’m not sure what you mean by that? Can you elaborate?

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itsasnowconemachine@reddit

For some types of early hard drives, you had to run a command to stop the hard-drive head that was flying across the disk and "park it" in a safe spot called a "landing zone" before turning off the computer or it could damage the disk.

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Nordicdba@reddit

Ah interesting. I never heard of that.

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xkind@reddit

You're not that guy, pal.

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Nordicdba@reddit

Thanks

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DiddlyDumb@reddit

Is that why CD bays are 5,25’?

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Nordicdba@reddit

I have no idea if there is any correlation between the 5.25 disks and CD rom drives. But that’s a great question.

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sarkarati@reddit

Installed Wolfenstein 3D with 5.25, Doom with 3.5, and Doom 2 with CD

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jbenze@reddit

3.5” were market as “hard disks” when they were first released. Weird and confusing; that’s how they sold my parents on a 3.5” drive.

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ILikeBumblebees@reddit

No, they never were. Early on, they were referred to as "microfloppy" drives to distinguish them from the larger form factors, but "hard disk" already referred to something else. Some references: * [InfoWorld, June 1983](https://books.google.com/books?id=zS8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false) -- see "Shrinking drives increase in storage" * [InfoWorld, Sept 1985](https://books.google.com/books?id=iS8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA33#v=onepage&q&f=false) -- see "Microfloppy Popularity Creates Dilemma for Manufacturers and Users"

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n0exit@reddit

I like the next article about AI spell checking.

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gxslim@reddit

I always just called them 3 and a half inch floppies. Never heard microfloppily, but I was also a kid so probably wasn't exposed to much tech marketing.

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jbenze@reddit

I never heard microfloppy; that’s a much better term for it. The sales people our local stores at the time referred to them as hard disks when I was young and it confused the hell out of me when I finally saw real hard disks.

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human-ish_@reddit

That's how I remember them. It was to differentiate the literally floppy disc and the firmer, harder disc.

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Sylocule@reddit

In South Africa, we call the 3.5” units ‘stiffy disks’ or ‘stiffies’.

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N7DeltaMike@reddit

Both. 5.25" when I was little, 3.5" by the time I was in middle school. I still have my college portfolio with pockets for 3 x 3.5" disks. I turned in many of my computer science assignments on those things.

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Lost_Services@reddit

All three were called floppy disks at the time.

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SteakJones@reddit

Yeah.. and we literally grew up with all of these.

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new_account_5009@reddit

I remember the last two, but not the first one. The Commodore 64 with the 5.25 inch floppy was the first computer I used. The 3.5 inch diskettes were common through high school. I've only ever seen the 8 inch floppy disks online well after they were common.

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Moxie_Stardust@reddit

The first time I ever saw an 8" floppy is when a friend and I stumbled across a dumpster full of them behind a warehouse. Naturally we decided to see how well they'd perform as Frisbees (not bad at all).

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Grabthars_Coping_Saw@reddit

Back when a 50mb drive was the size of a brick, I worked RMA receiving at a computer company in San Jose and saw them occasionally. We didn’t ship a lot of servers with 8” disc drives.

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RockStar4341@reddit

Tangentially, once me and a friend rode our bikes up to local strip mall and looked in Blockbuster dumpster, only to find DOZENS of porn VHS cassettes. We were like 11, and let me tell you, this was even better than the time I found half a Playboy in a drainage ditch.

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Koil_ting@reddit

What a mighty score, did you hide the magazine in a secret tree stump?

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RockStar4341@reddit

Pretty close! There was this woodsy area between subs that had essentially become a BMX track/fort building area. Stashed in a fort. That area is also where we went to smoke cigarettes and where I almost blew my hand off with a quarter stick. I have no idea how I didn't die or get arrested as a tween.

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Jupiter68128@reddit

John? Neal? Is this you?

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RockStar4341@reddit

Nope. Just another product of our time. When you got exercise and fresh air playing Darwin's Great Game. Drano bombs were another favorite. Easily assembled. The key was to be just far enough away that your eyes wouldn't get burned out when it blew.

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Juxtapoe@reddit

Cos you're a rock star.

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Electronic-Spinach43@reddit

In our local abandoned house in the woods we had a cache of nudey mags along with cigarettes and other quality items. I heard stories of porn magazines being found in ditches. I thought it was all bullshit till one day I found one in a ditch walking home from school. I guess once “used” no one wants to get caught with them.

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RockStar4341@reddit

Ha! Sounds like we had a very similar time. I'd just take off on my bike all day. If I ended up at a friend's I'd call my house and leave a message on answering machine if they weren't home. Or if I was purely exploring, then a payphone let mom know I was still alive. My drink of choice on a long ride was a root beer N.Y. Seltzer.

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NeedsMoreTuba@reddit

My friend and I once found an old 70's porno on a reel in an abandoned building. Her grandma had a reel-to-reel player so we watched part of it before deciding it was gross and weird. I don't remember if there was sound, but I do remember it being, like, Swedish or something? Definitely not made in the USA and didn't make me want to watch any more porn. We worked hard for that disappointment, though.

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BigConstruction4247@reddit

Oh my. 🥰

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eightbitagent@reddit

The 8” ones were early and mostly just used for data storage, before games were popular or needed that much space. My grandmother wrote genealogical books and used them to store data. By the time games were sold 0n disks 5.25 was the standard

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nucl3ar0ne@reddit

Commodore 64 was our first household computer as well...at least until it got stolen.

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BWarned_Seattle@reddit

If you're too young to have used a 5 1/4" floppy, you're not a Xennial you're a Millenial. If you're old enough that you weren't still a kid growing up when 3.5" floppy disks came out you're not a Xennial you're Gen X. If you think people ever referred to 3.5" disks as "hard disks" you're some combination of technologically illiterate and/or too young to even be in the Xennial conversation. Being a kid for the 5 1/4" to 3.5" transition is actually a pretty bang on Xennial litmus test. Unless you went to school in one of the few districts to neither get Apple IIes with Oregon Trail floppies nor PCs with Oregon Trail floppies donated in the great Apple vs Microsoft war to habituate kids to their OS early with tax writeoff-able donations of equipment and your family didn't have a computer at home because they were still pretty expensive. In which case, mega bummer, and you don't have to know shit about floppies to still be a Xennial.

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2bad-2care@reddit

>The Commodore 64 with the 5.25 inch floppy was the first computer I used. Oh, you skipped over the joy of loading off the cassette tape?

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HylanderUS@reddit

I can still see it when I close my eyes...."PRESS PLAY ON TAPE"

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trekologer@reddit

You still got to experience that if you forgot the ,8

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Mysterious-Feature24@reddit

Or sometimes ,8,1

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White_RavenZ@reddit

And then waiting nearly 20 minutes To play hangman

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Scottnothot12@reddit

pengo....or text based

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djmc329@reddit

Then it would just freeze and crash before the game started... You had to have real resilience as a kid who just bought a new game back then!

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Edm_swami@reddit

Or stroke em

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mylittleplaceholder@reddit

Hunt the Wumpus.

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GroundbreakingWing48@reddit

I LOVED Hunt the Wumpus!!!

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Salarian_American@reddit

Yeah "press play on tape" then go do something else for a bit

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l397flake@reddit

I still have my sx64 and my regular 64 stored somewhere. I started using them for my construction business. I used the Sierra Online software for the spreadsheet and the word processing to do proposals. The best part was waiting for the floppies to load.

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flat-moon_theory@reddit

I still have a Vic 20 with a few cassettes in my attic lol

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UnicornMeatball@reddit

I remember loading Rampage off of a cassette tape in the early/mid 90s

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OKStormknight@reddit

Started on a TRS-80 jacked into a memorex cassette player. Good times.

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pxpdoo@reddit

30 goto 10

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LordCoweater@reddit

10 goto 20 20 print "I am king!!!!!!" Alternately, 20 goto 30 for a possible halt and catch fire.

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pxpdoo@reddit

Hey. Save that sort of language to the tape deive, sir.

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Norse_By_North_West@reddit

Yeah NY first experiences were trash 80 and apple tape drives. I didn't own a computer until 3.5s tho

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OKStormknight@reddit

5.25s were my first floppy-disk experience. Then 3.5s when my Dad got a PowerMac. Anything worth playing was on at least 10 discs.

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Norse_By_North_West@reddit

First comp I owned was 94,so I had a cd-rom. Man there was a huge tech difference from 89 to 94

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OKStormknight@reddit

An insane jump when CDs became the standard. Then again when video cards became an actual thing. And here we were, living life on the wave.

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Norse_By_North_West@reddit

I remember having a matrox 2d card, 3dfx voodoo for 3d,and a midi card. Late 90s were wild

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daemin@reddit

There are dozens of us yet kicking around on Reddit. Hell, this account of mine is almost old enough to vote lol.

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Norse_By_North_West@reddit

While my reddit account isn't that old, my ICQ number is sub 1 million

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daemin@reddit

Lol I don't recall mine but I think it was at most 6 digits.

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Norse_By_North_West@reddit

Still remember mine, had repeating numbers

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Jokierre@reddit

Dungeons of Daggorath represent!

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phoenix-corn@reddit

Oh lord. I worked as a PC tech for awhile as my first job. Soooooo many small businesses had tape backup at the end of the 90s. I remember one vet's office was the most horrifying. They didn't know why the tape stopped working but it was VISIBLY full of matted melted dog fur. We sold them a new setup. Maybe we could get it working again as it's a pretty mechanically based system, but they really needed some type of storage where the fur wasn't going to be as much of an issue.

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Smack2k@reddit

25 year IT guy here I remember tapes filling up and needing a second tape put in to finish backups, yet the sites we'd tell to swap tapes never would. They would then complain when something couldn't be recovered.

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phoenix-corn@reddit

As far as I know these folks never complained. I walked into that mess because they wanted their system checked for Y2K compliance, and I was the sucker who did that anytime she didn't have web clients (not as often as my boss would have liked, probably). They had just been printing everything for a paper system, just cheerfully chugging along that way. It was easy to find something cheap that would meet their needs that was much more secure than their then set-up. AGH.

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mylittleplaceholder@reddit

Had 1530 (datasette), 1541 (5 1/4”), and 1581 (3 1/2”). :)

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AintTripping@reddit

I had a VIC-20 with the cassette tape!

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eightbitagent@reddit

Cassettes came after 5 1/4 floppies. They just had more space

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ButtholeQuiver@reddit

LOAD "\*", 8

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So_Long_DentalPlan@reddit

the best games were on tape!

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bluebus74@reddit

I wore out my copy of Pharaoh's Curse...it just stopped working one day and that was it, never even met anyone who ever played or even heard of it. Atari 400 I think. There's one on eBay with the cassette drive... what a turd.

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phoenix-corn@reddit

Check out various video and computer game archives, they might have it!

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bluebus74@reddit

Ha, I appreciate the sediment but I know it's horrible. I don't give a fuck what games they make or re-make or emulate from now to eternity. Nothing will ever replace the feelings I had back then. And I'm not crying, you are.

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phoenix-corn@reddit

In case you want to check it out, it's here: [https://archive.org/details/the-pharaohs-curse-vic-20](https://archive.org/details/the-pharaohs-curse-vic-20) And it's actually not really horrible! It's actually really damn impressive for an 8 bit game!

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bluebus74@reddit

Yeah, I just watched this...https://youtu.be/AG8duK6QJoA?si=zUncGLI44QNovPKR I don't think my version had a level code like you see when he gets all treasure... fuckin 1983 on title screen. I forgot about that damned bird.

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phoenix-corn@reddit

Yeah the emulator online one I found was for a Vic system I think, which would probably be a smidge different than the Atari 8 bit version, but not TOO different.

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phoenix-corn@reddit

I dunno, replaying some has been really great for me. Games that were good during that time had to be REALLY good to get past the bad graphics and limited abilities systems had then. The Atari 2600 version of Centipede is still my favorite, and Tower Toppler is still surprisingly good, as is Bubble Bobble....

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bluebus74@reddit

Ha, I just watched a Tower Toppler vid from atari 7800. The bouncing ball noise started to get to me, lol.

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phoenix-corn@reddit

I had it for an Amstrad computer that ran on DOS. I bought a 7800 in college because it was easier to come by on that than on other platforms.

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So_Long_DentalPlan@reddit

I had a VIC 20. It ran on tape and cartriges. Loved that thing

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willywonka1971@reddit

Thankfully those were only mythical to me like programming with punch cards.

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EBN_Drummer@reddit

We had the cassette player but got the 5.25" drive by the time I could remember.

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MostlyHostly@reddit

War Games with Matthew Broderick. Giant floppy disks and telephone handset internet.

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Jefflehem@reddit

We used them in grammar school with the Apple IIc, the first computer we had in achool.

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arcctgx@reddit

Did you ever manually cut out a notch on the other side of 5.25" disk so that you could use both sides?

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NeutronFerret@reddit

Used a paper hole punch to do that.

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Bent_notbroken@reddit

Absolutely I felt so powerful doing that for my Apple ][ games

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Zane42v2@reddit

I cut the corners off my 3.5" disks so they could be 1.44MB instead of 720KB.

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-thestar-@reddit

Oh man this is an old memory

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cornpudding@reddit

I had a single hole punch in my desk just for this. I also had tape to keep my dad from writing over important disks

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mschr493@reddit

🤯

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DaHick@reddit

TRS-80 Model 2 used the 8" drives - My uncle had one that I used multiple times and taught him how to use it.

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NeutronFerret@reddit

Saw the first one on older Olympia computers. Do you know the “datasette” for the C64? I saw it the first time in Germany, some kind of cassette type storage medium was used on those. Rewind tape, press play. Start typing commands to load the game files (list) or just start.. I actually forgot the command.. Load “*” ,8,1 (run main application?) Load “$” ,8,1 (show file list?)

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basylica@reddit

Id never seen 8” IRL until a job i had a few years ago. I liberated a stack of them, then gave a ton away at a conference They were only used in mainframes really.

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LiGuangMing1981@reddit

Same here. Don't remember ever seeing 8 inch disks when I was a kid, but 5.25 and 3.5 inch disks were both very common. Personally used 5.25 disks first as I had Apple IIe computers at school and an IBM XT PC at home. Didn't use 3.5 disks until later in elementary school as I recall.

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GarminTamzarian@reddit

The only time I've ever seen an 8" diskette actually being used is by Matthew Broderick in *Wargames*.

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ellabfine@reddit

Nice! I used to write my papers in elementary school on my grandfather's Commodore 64 and I played Dig Dug and a couple other games on it occasionally. I think I only ever used the 5.25 inch floppies until the 3.5 became common in mid- to late-90s.

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Country_Gravy420@reddit

The Commodore 64 was such a huge part of my childhood. It was such a great machine. Five and a quarter inch floppy discs and cartridges.

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Axe238@reddit

If you started with one and finished with the newer ones.

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CrappityCabbage@reddit

Really? A xennial and you grew up with 8" floppies? It's certainly possible but I feel like I'm an elder xennial and I've only seen them a couple of times.

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SteakJones@reddit

If you wanna split hairs about the definition of growing up with, then the answer would be 5.25” and the 3.5” floppies. But yeah I’m almost certain a few of the old computers at my elementary school had 8” drives. They were around enough to remember them.

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CrappityCabbage@reddit

Wow. I never had that experience. My understanding is that the 8" disks were used more in business and industrial settings, but it's certainly not unlikely that your school bought its first computers earlier than mine did.

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SteakJones@reddit

Yeah I couldn’t tell you what they were used for. Hell now that I think about it I don’t even know if they were used. I remember seeing the massive floppies in my computer teacher’s office. Maybe he just had them as a novelty? But that dude was a super geek. We had a huge dot matrix printer lab set up, and all of the Apple II’s were running a networked copy of Oregon Trail so we could see eachother’s grave stones. “Mr. Walton’s Fart Breath” was a popular epitaph phrase.

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thispartyrules@reddit

I grew up with a "portable" PC with a tiny amber screen and dual 5.25" floppy drives, I didn't see the 8" floppies until I was in a college IT course and the guy brought some in as a novelty

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belladonna1987@reddit

We had an Osborne portable. Good times, good times.

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OKStormknight@reddit

The IBM PC “portable” suitcase deck! My dad’s first PC (Taken in after my brother decided he wasn’t up for Engineering in 1985 and didn’t need it for college.)

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SteakJones@reddit

They were a rarity for sure. I have vague memories of them. I just knew they existed.

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[-]

Hopeful_Passenger_69@reddit

Exactly. They were bigger in elementary school and then got smaller when I was going into middle school (maybe late elementary).

Reply

[-]

OrangeJoe83@reddit

Not true. I find that a lot of us did not, in fact, grow up.

Reply

[-]

wmooresr@reddit

I’m never gonna grow up!

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[-]

SteakJones@reddit

Touché

Reply

[-]

Pegomastax_King@reddit

Remember the weird Zip drives right before discs took over.

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[-]

SteakJones@reddit

Loved my Zip drive.

Reply

[-]

StoneAgeSkillz@reddit

And harddrives.

Reply

[-]

PrinceCastanzaCapone@reddit

And the United States was still using them to manage its nuclear arsenal up until 2019!

Reply

[-]

AccomplishedSuit1004@reddit

I have the vaguest memories of the first 2, mostly 3.

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[-]

austinmiles@reddit

It’s one of the defining features of what a xennial is.

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[-]

That_Engineering3047@reddit

and they were all unreliable. Ever lose a paper in college to a floppy disk that suddenly became unreadable?

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[-]

SteakJones@reddit

I used to work my college’s help desk… soooo many people lost their final papers on these.

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[-]

belinck@reddit

No love for a cassette tape?;?!?

Reply

[-]

redoctoberz@reddit

Not really for the 8” ones. Those were old school.

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[-]

ShawnyMcKnight@reddit

Yup, not sure what that first one was called but the others were 5.25 inch floppy disks and 3.5 inch. Mainly if you broke open the plastic or slid over the metal cover you would see the floppy disk.

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[-]

lilbearpie@reddit

We always called the small ones diskettes

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[-]

Mysterious-Status-44@reddit

That was always the confusing part

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[-]

DrFloyd5@reddit

Why? Because the disk inside the shell was floppy.

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[-]

9001@reddit

All three are still called floppy disks.

Reply

[-]

tjtillmancoag@reddit

We used to call them floppy disks. We still do, but we used to, too.

Reply

[-]

Attack-Cat-@reddit

The last iteration was called Zip disks and they were SO GOOD. I loved those things

Reply

[-]

9001@reddit

Zip disks were different and proprietary and not pictured above.

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[-]

slowandlow714@reddit

Except in Australia where the 3.5s were called "stiffies".

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[-]

Face88888888@reddit

OPs picture is literally from the Wikipedia page for “Floppy Disk” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk

Reply

[-]

Bent_notbroken@reddit

Wow

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[-]

festosterone5000@reddit

“How can you tell you didn’t grow up with floppy disks?” This OP calling it a hard disk.

Reply

[-]

merreborn@reddit

The xennials I grew up with made the exact same "hard disk" mistake back then too. So fucking it up now feels entirely generationally authentic to me.

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[-]

justkeeptreading@reddit

they used to be, and they still are, too

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[-]

ILikeBumblebees@reddit

RIP Mitch.

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[-]

troubleschute@reddit

The “floppy” part is the medium inside. Hard disks use metal platters.

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[-]

SlightlyOffended1984@reddit

Yeah I spent a lot of time copying the big B:/ floppies over to the A:/ floppies, for fewer disks

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[-]

Deazul@reddit

They still are

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[-]

AlexanderMcGaffe@reddit

God, I remember my teacher telling me a dirty computer joke. What do redheads and computers have in common?

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[-]

MidCenturyMarzipan@reddit

I dunno. What do redheads and computers have in common?

Reply

[-]

AlexanderMcGaffe@reddit

Both accept 8 and a half inch

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[-]

NachoNachoDan@reddit

Hilariously told by a man who is packing 1/4 of that

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[-]

ILikeBumblebees@reddit

They both have no souls!

Reply

[-]

ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Idk what?

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[-]

ltnew007@reddit

They are still all called floppy disks.

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[-]

Potato_Stains@reddit

They all have floppy disks inside them, I think there was confusion about the outer casing being the floppy part.

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[-]

Shipkiller-in-theory@reddit

The 3.5” was a diskette, marketed as a floppy drive for the same reason a Cable Digital Unit is marketed as a Modem. That is what people are used to calling them.

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[-]

inorite234@reddit

Now they're just called "The Save Button."

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[-]

Techstepper812@reddit

They are still called floppy disks. Hard disk=HDD different hardware.

Reply

[-]

UlteriorCulture@reddit

In South Africa the smaller form factored ones were called stiffies... I'm not joking

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[-]

jbenze@reddit

They called 3.5” floppies “hard disks” for a few when they first sold them. It was very confusing.

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[-]

ILikeBumblebees@reddit

Was that the same "they" that referred to a monitor as a TV?

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[-]

Lochlan@reddit

The same people that call your desktop wallpaper a screensaver.

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[-]

jbenze@reddit

lol probably. “Hard disk” was a selling points when they sold my parents one in the early 80s.

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[-]

schizrade@reddit

No they didn’t, the floppy part refers to the disk material inside the housing. Its floppy. A hard disk literally has metal platters.

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[-]

jbenze@reddit

I’m aware of that but that was one of the buzzwords in the early 80s when they were selling them, I assume to differentiate them from the softer 5.25” disks.

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[-]

AttackSock@reddit

I was afraid to be “that guy”, but our computers teacher screamed this at us so many times I couldn’t let it go, so, thanks for thatguying so I didn’t have to 🤣

Reply

[-]

Overweighover@reddit

Did the teacher explain upload and download to the class?

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[-]

AttackSock@reddit

I don’t think it had been invented yet, or at least it wasn’t a common enough practice that it ever got brought up.

Reply

[-]

WerewolfDifferent296@reddit

Yep. The floppy is inside. The small one just had a hard casing protecting the floppy.

Reply

[-]

Straight-Tune-5894@reddit

Don’t forget to flip it over.

Reply

[-]

TheOneWhoReadsStuff@reddit

Yeah. Dumb ass Internet. OP doesn’t even give a toss about the answer, they just want clicks I’m guessing.

Reply

[-]

OutcomeLegitimate618@reddit

Yep. The only thing called a hard disk is installed permanently inside a computer (hard drive, now called a solid disk drive I think)

Reply

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Rent_A_Cloud@reddit

I remember the middle one being a floppy disc and the right one being a diskette. You know, because the right one wasn't floppy but rigid. Then again, I was like 4 at the time.

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[-]

smuckola@reddit

And at all other times. Wat? lol

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[-]

Hellament@reddit

Even the hard ones would flop if you flopped hard enough

Reply

[-]

GarminTamzarian@reddit

And we had hard disks as well. Eventually.

Reply

[-]

Bee-Aromatic@reddit

And are now. They’re named for the actual disk inside them. On all of those, it’s a piece of film, hence “floppy.” On hard disks, they’re metal.

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[-]

mister_immortal@reddit

At times we called the 3.5" floppy disk the 'hard floppy disk' because they had that hard plastic shell. I encountered all three varieties but the 8 inch variety was pretty rare by the time my old ass started using computers.

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[-]

Pluckypato@reddit

All of them floppy’s

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[-]

gxslim@reddit

They still are.

Reply

[-]

International_Hat113@reddit

Came here to say this.

Reply

[-]

mylekiller@reddit

Came to make sure someone set the record straight.

Reply

[-]

cpt_ugh@reddit

They were literally called floppy discs. C, not K. /pedant Oh, and also: mouses.

Reply

[-]

Uncle_polo@reddit

True. Hard disk is what the OS was loaded on. All 200mb of it.

Reply

[-]

ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Oh yeah? I had a Mac and remember the little guys being called hard disks. Sounds like that wasn't actually the case, it was a long time ago lol

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[-]

Savingskitty@reddit

Maybe you’re mixing it up with hard drives?

Reply

[-]

ChaseTheRedDot@reddit

No, he is correct, Apple called 3.5 inch discs hard disks.

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Savingskitty@reddit

I don’t remember that at all. They called the hard disk drive a hard disk drive. We had Macintosh computers - they always just called it a disk or a floppy from my recollection.

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faderjockey@reddit

I remember them being referred to as "diskettes"

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[-]

carlitospig@reddit

I do and I wasn’t even an apple user. It was eeeeearly, like when they were first introduced. Maybe it was regional? I was in Cali at the time.

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

I was starting to wonder if it was regional also, but I grew up in Massachusetts. I’m only today learning that the majority of people appeared to have called them floppy disks

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[-]

carlitospig@reddit

Yep back then we called them hard disks in our computing classes. I don’t know why we are the only ones who remember it.

Reply

[-]

Face88888888@reddit

You two must be experiencing some sort of Mandela Effect or something.

Reply

[-]

carlitospig@reddit

😵‍💫

Reply

[-]

mschr493@reddit

And the desktop icon for the internal storage was named Macintosh HD by default.

Reply

[-]

tcpukl@reddit

So Apple were stupid back then as well?

Reply

[-]

cleverinspiringname@reddit

They were called hard disks by people who were wrong.

Reply

[-]

neanderthalman@reddit

I was one of them. I remember the grade school argument. Calling the 3.5” ‘floppy’ when it clearly is nothing of the sort is *stupid* even if it is correct. And the idea of an internal drive (aka hard drive) was completely alien in the age of the C64/128.

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Apprehensive_Hat8986@reddit

It's not calling the shell floppy, it's calling the _disk_ floppy. Does calling the square shell a disk some how make that argument smart?

Reply

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mschr493@reddit

It's referring to the media inside the case, not the case itself, compared to the rigid plates inside an actual hard drive.

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mschr493@reddit

A lot of them had the HD symbol on them for high density or something, I guess I can see how people thought that plus the tougher case meant hard disk. But yeah, still a floppy.

Reply

[-]

The_Grinning_Bastard@reddit

They can be a sizeable demo.

Reply

[-]

LtPowers@reddit

Especially among Mac users.

Reply

[-]

tcpukl@reddit

Open up the case, its still just a brown floppy disk.

Reply

[-]

the_0rly_factor@reddit

They were never called hard disks lol

Reply

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Lost_Services@reddit

On the inside of the 3.5" shell, is a floppy round disk. Just like the others. They were all called floppy disks. The picture we are discussing came from here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy\_disk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk)

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[-]

Apprehensive_Hat8986@reddit

They still are.

Reply

[-]

exact0khan@reddit

Yes the holy trinity

Reply

[-]

garden__gate@reddit

Here I was thinking I’d had it wrong all these years!

Reply

[-]

tcpukl@reddit

Yeah, those 3 are floppy disks. So whats the question again? I did grow up with harddisks as well though.

Reply

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Koil_ting@reddit

They still are, a hard disk is synonymous with a hard drive which is/was naturally a different platter style non-portable storage device.

Reply

[-]

cmdshft4@reddit

We had a cassette tape recorder/player that connected to our TRS-80 Color Computer II ![gif](giphy|13CpJR7THZgaaY)

Reply

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Underhill86@reddit

A hard disk is the one inside the computer that holds the US, data, programs, etc. All of these are floppies. The use of these three actually overlapped, and I was around during their use.

Reply

[-]

Ok_Percentage5157@reddit

All the above.

Reply

[-]

mytoynhobbypackrat@reddit

Found some of these and used the 8 inch as frisbees and the 5 inch as shurikens and the 3.5 took it apart and tried flicking the disk with the metal center ... best is the 8 inch.

Reply

[-]

amigammon@reddit

I worked at a floppy disk factory!

Reply

[-]

cishet-camel-fucker@reddit

Used to have to pay $1 for each floppy in the school store.

Reply

[-]

Davegvg@reddit

Yes.

Reply

[-]

ssee1848@reddit

Punch card for me!

Reply

[-]

BornAce@reddit

And paper tape

Reply

[-]

tearsonurcheek@reddit

Cassette backup, then floppies. My dad's work used punch cards on their computers (Nike/Hercules missile system).

Reply

[-]

SINY10306@reddit

Two of my friends had Commodore 64. I really wanted one, but parents would not shell out as I already had Sega Master System. I did actually get a used C64 free or very cheap. But did not even turn on, while parents would not pay for repair. Eventually got a home computer in 1999. Cannot remember specific model for life of me (though was certainly not MacOS). To answer more directly: I guess had the middle and smallest size shown here of magnetic disc media. Even the 1999 computer may have been compatible with both, while I don’t think C64 was compatible with the largest of three.

Reply

[-]

blownout2657@reddit

I’ve seen punch cards but not used them. Oregon trail came on all three.

Reply

[-]

vabeachkevin@reddit

Started with the 5.25 floppy disks.

Reply

[-]

DirtyMac88@reddit

That's where my apple 2 Oregon trail copy went

Reply

[-]

falconshadow21@reddit

Floppy until I was 12 or so. Then it was always hard.

Reply

[-]

Able-Fisherman-3142@reddit

Punch cards

Reply

[-]

Backwaters_Run_Deep@reddit

I grew up with hard ^disks! . . 🦐 . ^Wapash

Reply

[-]

jehjeh3711@reddit

My first PC had both. Apple IIGS

Reply

[-]

blondechick80@reddit

Yes and yes.. can't forget zip disks, jazz drives and laserdiscs

Reply

[-]

Kelzekyr@reddit

Gawd I remember installing Leisure Suit Larry from 5.25" floppies.

Reply

[-]

Fallk0re@reddit

Played Kings Quest and Leisure Suit Larry on the 5.25s.

Reply

[-]

Fuckmylife1001@reddit

Man, in jr high we got a Tandy computer with the 5” floppy!

Reply

[-]

DiaDeLosMuebles@reddit

Did you have that weird blue and yellow OS?

Reply

[-]

TangFiend@reddit

"Deskmate" That was their own proprietary shell firmware. That was built into the motherboard. Weird, isn't really the word. It was actually really ahead of it's time. This other company named Microsoft created this thing called "Windows" and that was a wrap in terms of competition

Reply

[-]

madarbrab@reddit

There's actually quite a bit of lore and even treachery surrounding the entire transition from early interfaces to what had essentially become the standard GUI (jeez, I feel so old even using that word). Obviously much had changed since then, but the shift from text based commands to visually oriented interface was revolutionary

Reply

[-]

Vibriobactin@reddit

Yep. I remember. Parents tinkered with it but got kinda lost. I continued to play with it and then picked up programming in qbasic in 4th grade.

Reply

[-]

madarbrab@reddit

Anybody remember the green monitors? TRA-80 machines

Reply

[-]

Nightriser@reddit

I won one from a local spelling bee.

Reply

[-]

Vibriobactin@reddit

Oh yeah. Tandy 1000tx baby!

Reply

[-]

ILikeBumblebees@reddit

Did you return it because you couldn't fit any 5¼” disks in the undersized dribe?

Reply

[-]

Henchforhire@reddit

My foster parent had one with the 5-inch floppy and some funs games. Global thermal nuclear war.

Reply

[-]

Fuckmylife1001@reddit

Yas! I had that!!

Reply

[-]

DHammer79@reddit

Same, got aTandy from Radio Shack. I was in grade 7 or 8 or so. No jr high where I am.

Reply

[-]

Fuckmylife1001@reddit

We were the shisnit! Its was 7th grade I think.

Reply

[-]

DerSpazmacher@reddit

First one, then the other

Reply

[-]

itsok-imwhite@reddit

Pushes up glasses. They are all floppy disks.

Reply

[-]

Tetris5216@reddit

Mornings hard disks but became floppy disks later on

Reply

[-]

C_Everett_Marm@reddit

Remember turning Single-Sided into Double-Sided with a hole punch? On the 5.25s of course. Not so easy to notch a 3.5.

Reply

[-]

AllenKll@reddit

Only some one who never had to use any of these knows that they are all floppy disks.

Reply

[-]

ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Wrong. The 3.5s were called hard disks to differentiate from the bigger ones, which we called floppies, when I was growing up.

Reply

[-]

AllenKll@reddit

Wrong. 3.5s where still and are still called floppy disks.

Reply

[-]

ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Jesus, not this shit again. The 3.5s were called hard disks to differentiate from the bigger ones, which we called floppies, when I was growing up.

Reply

[-]

Secondhandmeatstore@reddit

Both

Reply

[-]

colnago82@reddit

Gotta have the 8” if you want it to actually flop. System 36, baby.

Reply

[-]

ImpossibleInternet3@reddit

https://preview.redd.it/uwdamqdfitkc1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26854819c8a9f89555b5387ce35e48b8ee23baae

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[-]

ElPoloLocoBro@reddit

I’ve used all 3 growing up

Reply

[-]

LiquidSnape@reddit

those are all floppy discs

Reply

[-]

stormstormstorms@reddit

Yes

Reply

[-]

Equivalent-Glove7165@reddit

Both

Reply

[-]

Thunderfoot2112@reddit

Cassette tapes...

Reply

[-]

rfloyd1280@reddit

First the LARGE. Floppy.

Reply

[-]

Just-some-70guy@reddit

None of them at all. First computer stuff I worked with were 80 character punch cards.

Reply

[-]

Fine_Following_2559@reddit

This is just making me want to play number munchers, Oregon trail and where in the world is Carmen sandiego 😄 We also had this game that was like some sort of swinging vine in the jungle game I can't remember what it was called though. But yes I lived through all three of these.

Reply

[-]

CrappityCabbage@reddit

Ah, Number Munchers. Not so well-remembered but still fun as heck.

Reply

[-]

jaspersgroove@reddit

Pitfall?

Reply

[-]

Vibriobactin@reddit

I think Carmen Sandiego for teaching me the most fundamental aspects of geography. If it wasn’t for them, I would have absolutely no idea. But having some concept were bagdad was and what it was when I was in fifth grade is kind of impressive. I used to love Mickey’s space adventure and F19 stealth fighter

Reply

[-]

ashleymeloncholy@reddit

Load "*" ,8,1 all the way baby

Reply

[-]

CrappityCabbage@reddit

OLD DSK1

Reply

[-]

PuppiesAndAnarchy@reddit

![gif](giphy|XbIoQQuFfFIirDn4A0)

Reply

[-]

Tragicallyphallic@reddit

Mmmmm silent service

Reply

[-]

schmeckendeugler@reddit

PRESS PLAY ON TAPE

Reply

[-]

thetoastmonster@reddit

CHAIN ""

Reply

[-]

HomeBrewThis@reddit

Oh Commodore my Commodore 64.

Reply

[-]

ILikeBumblebees@reddit

Then go have a glass of orange juice, walk the dog, take a shower, and finally come back and start playing.

Reply

[-]

snowboard7621@reddit

Yeah! Unless you’re in a browsing mood… Load”$”,8

Reply

[-]

burgerbeggar@reddit

Sometimes, I watch the best commodore 64 games on youtube. Its well put together and about 4 hours long.

Reply

[-]

VinceAmonte@reddit

“please instert disk #3”

Reply

[-]

johnnybok@reddit

Haha but there was no “please” back then

Reply

[-]

TangFiend@reddit

Sierra used to ask nicely, lovely husband and wife developers

Reply

[-]

SourGumby@reddit

Sierra was a husband and wife duo?!?!?!?! I played SO MANY Sierra games while growing up.

Reply

[-]

CrappityCabbage@reddit

Sierra was *founded* by Ken and Roberta Williams, but they hired a lot of other designers who helmed a lot of the games. In the early days Roberta designed and Ken did the programming, but by the '90s Ken was strictly doing CEO work and Roberta was only designing a few series: King's Quest, Laura Bow, Mixed-Up Mother Goose, and Phantasmagoria. If you played other Sierra games then they were almost definitely designed by other people.

Reply

[-]

GnarlyHeadStudios@reddit

Ken & Roberta Williams, yup.

Reply

[-]

elkniodaphs@reddit

Still at it, too. They recently did a remake of Colossal Cave.

Reply

[-]

SourGumby@reddit

Wait, what? They're still making games? But not under sierra obviously, so what are they releasing them under?

Reply

[-]

chargers949@reddit

Kings quest and quest for glory addict reporting in.

Reply

[-]

Fast_Edd1e@reddit

Freddy Farkus Frontier Pharmacist.

Reply

[-]

vinciblechunk@reddit

Every byte mattered

Reply

[-]

xkind@reddit

please insert disk #33 (installing kings quest iv)

Reply

[-]

gertrudeblythe@reddit

I think there were 20+ disks to install Windows 3.1.

Reply

[-]

GnarlyHeadStudios@reddit

Win 3.1 was 6 disks, Windows 95 was 13.

Reply

[-]

itsasnowconemachine@reddit

NT was 22. Slackware 2 was 73!

Reply

[-]

crazy-diam0nd@reddit

And thus, Tony Stark died in the cave

Reply

[-]

adam10009@reddit

My doom 2 install disk 4 of 5 was ALWAYS fucked up

Reply

[-]

gabotuit@reddit

Shareware version always pissed me in the last bit of the game

Reply

[-]

Shikatanai@reddit

CRC error

Reply

[-]

ReiperXHC@reddit

Please insert Disc 10. (Before everyone had CD roms.)

Reply

[-]

TeamScience79@reddit

Disc 10 is corrupted or damaged, try again? y/n

Reply

[-]

DigitalDefenestrator@reddit

General Failure reading drive A: (A)bort (R)etry (F)ail?

Reply

[-]

myshtigo@reddit

Insert disk 13. Win95 install Or disk 39 win98

Reply

[-]

RetroScores@reddit

After you install dos.

Reply

[-]

VinceAmonte@reddit

I still remember buying and installing a SCSI adapter to connect my first CD-ROM, lol.

Reply

[-]

RetroScores@reddit

Remember installing dos and then installing windows but then a disk decides “fuck you” and you get to start all over? Fun!

Reply

[-]

mechapoitier@reddit

God back when buying a game involved laboriously inserting, waiting, and ejecting upward of a dozen 3.5”s

Reply

[-]

Drslappybags@reddit

I'm gonna install this game. See you tomorrow.

Reply

[-]

brinazee@reddit

I bought Office 7 on floppy disk in college (they were out of the CD version, and the non student price was way too high). More than 40 floppies. Painful install.

Reply

[-]

Vibriobactin@reddit

Oooh yeah. I remember now. Fffffffff that sucked

Reply

[-]

Vibriobactin@reddit

Disk 2 of 12 Doom had 10-12 iirc? We didnt have internet quite yet when I played it the first time

Reply

[-]

Tarbal81@reddit

Well now I want to play Hexen again

Reply

[-]

mcflyin69@reddit

Both

Reply

[-]

irrational-like-you@reddit

Not OP, apparently

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[-]

ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

The 3.5s were called hard disks to differentiate from the bigger ones, which we called floppies, when I was growing up.

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irrational-like-you@reddit

You’re talking about the 3.5” floppy disks? Maybe you grew up somewhere very different from me, but hard disk = permanent storage drive attached via IDE cable inside your computer, and floppy disk was all three of the pictured items.

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[-]

ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Yeah, the 3.5” disks were called hard disks to differentiate from the others, which we called floppy disks. I didn’t expect all the disbelief when I posted, don’t like how your comment and others are so dismissive of what I grew up with, but that’s what we called them.

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irrational-like-you@reddit

Sorry to offend. I'm guessing you're not the only one that called them "hard disks" because they're not very floppy. But what did you call the internal 3.5" IDE/SATA drives that were also hard?

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[-]

ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

I appreciate that. Just got through texting my family to try and figure it all out. For our first computer, a Mac, we don't remember there being a hard drive. We saved everything on the 3.5s. Then when we got our second Mac we thought it was really cool that the computer itself had a drive and we didn't have to save everything on a disk. We can't remember if we called that internal drive a 'hard disk' or 'hard drive.' We think we called it a 'hard disk,' then may have changed to calling the 3.5s 'floppies' at that point. There may have been an internal drive on our first Mac but we weren't aware of it so didn't reference it at all.

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[-]

irrational-like-you@reddit

I dreamed of having a Mac when I was younger. I remember playing zork on the 5 1/4”, and I worked a tech support job where people would send in backups on the 3.5”, sometimes it would take 40-50 floppies for a single backup and we’d have to sit there loading them one by one. Good times.

Reply

[-]

Stuffed_deffuts@reddit

All three

Reply

[-]

punkkitty312@reddit

Yes. And those are 3 types of floppy disks.

Reply

[-]

JoeMillersHat@reddit

Orange but mostly blue.

Reply

[-]

jesusleftnipple@reddit

...... medium floppy apparently I thought it was a big one ...

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terriblystupidjoke@reddit

Commodore 64 floppies! ![gif](giphy|XbIoQQuFfFIirDn4A0)

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afleetingmoment@reddit

We had a C64 at home, while my teacher had a C128 in our first grade classroom. Fond memories of those early computers!

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Tragicallyphallic@reddit

TIL: C128

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AlmnysDrasticDrackal@reddit

I also had a C64 tape drive. (Same idea -- they're all magnetic storage.) https://preview.redd.it/4egiwca2pekc1.jpeg?width=997&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4a2826bb40c67256fcb55e59229a4e7091b02b65

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

I had no idea these were a thing until reading through the comments. Very cool

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Tragicallyphallic@reddit

I think that’s more of a GenX thing? I’m a Xennial and I only remember seeing my brother who’s nine years older than me using one a few times.

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Moxie_Stardust@reddit

It wasn't nearly as common in the US, but in Europe many of them were much more familiar with loading from cassettes.

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tcpukl@reddit

Amstrad cpc-464 as well had a tape deck to load games.

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Moxie_Stardust@reddit

Yeah, I just meant Europeans in general had a much broader experience with loading games from cassette 😊 Feels like in the US it was mostly used for the early systems, and then we mostly used disk drives by the mid-80s onward.

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ratttertintattertins@reddit

Really? But in Europe those tape based systems were often from US companies. For example the transition from Commodore 64 -> Commodore Amiga involved switching from tapes to floppies. Commodore was one of the most common computer brands back then but they were a US firm.

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Koil_ting@reddit

I'm from the U.S and my dads Atari 800 had a cassette tape adapter and a couple of the 5 1/4 floppy disc drives. He was pretty nerdy though I suppose.

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Vibriobactin@reddit

Yep. Wendover just did a bit on it Harddrive evolution has essentially peaked/starting to plateau. But tape technology really hasn’t evolved since the seventies to 80s so a lot more potential growth and dense, cheap storage.

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xkind@reddit

I just used a regular cassette drive. The same kind I listened to my mix tapes with.

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FI-Engineer@reddit

Magnetic tape backup drives are still very much a thing.

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Nothing_new_to_share@reddit

This blew my mind when our office manager complained about needing to change the tapes on a long Friday.

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Werechupacabra@reddit

Yeah. First computer I ever used was a Commodore PET with a tape drive. By the time I finished elementary school, the Commodores had all been replaced with Apples.

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Select_Nectarine8229@reddit

All of them

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New_Command_583@reddit

I was introduced to 5.25 ones in grad school. So no growing up with them!

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scienceplayground@reddit

Shit king’s quest was like 11 3.5’s

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scienceplayground@reddit

Half chubbs

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cupareo98@reddit

I grew up with one apple computer and 20 kids in the third grade classroom. Switching between computer time, which was like 20 minutes a kid. I just can't remember if it was a daily or weekly thing.

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B0Nnaaayy@reddit

Oooooh man! This topic faks me up, cause I know.

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ipaxton@reddit

The big floppy disk is how I played Oregon Trail back in the mid 80’s

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ChrisWonsowski@reddit

Floppies, hard disks, ZIP DISKS, and optical were all relevant during the first 10 years of my life.

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Emotional_Boat_8332@reddit

I had all three in my lifetime!

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cracker_barrel_kid55@reddit

My disc is hard first thing in the morning but floppy by 2pm

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MRSRN65@reddit

Punch cards.

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MostlyHostly@reddit

I started on computers when the disk was actually floppy. Grew up around hard floppies. Witnessed the zip drive. Now there's no more Moore's Law lol.

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BBakerStreet@reddit

All of them - and tape and punch cards.

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Prometheus_303@reddit

Back in elementary school, we had Oregon Trail on the middle sized floppy. Then in high school it was the small hard disks. I had a case that held 6 (I think) they were semi transparent, bright pink, orange and blue... Amazing thinking back remembering I had no problem using 1.35Mb! Then sometime around sophomore or junior year of uni I switched to USB flash drives... Bumped up from half a dozen MBs between the various disks to a single device holding 256Mbs. And now... My phone has half a terabyte of storage + 2Tb cloud storage...

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Get_your_grape_juice@reddit

I started with the 5.25”, but *mostly* grew up with the 3.5” diskettes. My elementary school had Apple II’s that were old by the time I got there. Two 5.25” floppy drive pods under the monitor, IIRC.

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ocelotactual@reddit

Yes.

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Impressive_Friend740@reddit

Both? we had a crazy old pc with like a few games like digger, we didn't do much else I think our mother used it for work, then we got the brand new apple computer the teal one.. good god I would give anything for that back! But our old pc had both floppy and hard disks. Would be so interested to see those now!

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halasaurus@reddit

Yes.

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HaluxRigidus@reddit

Yes

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DesignerTex@reddit

Floppy were around when I was a kid but didn't start using computers regularly until 3.5" were the main storage. I never had to use a larger floppy.

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Super_Rando_Man@reddit

/run.menu

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Get_your_grape_juice@reddit

I started with the 5.25”, but *mostly* grew up with the 3.5” diskettes. My elementary school had Apple II’s that were old by the time I got there. Two 5.25” floppy drive pods under the monitor, IIRC.

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PurpleFrogMBA@reddit

Where’s the cassette tape hard drive for my VIC 20?

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ArseBlarster420@reddit

Floppy floppy discs then Floppy Discs came out

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StumptownRetro@reddit

All were floppies to me. But used the 5.25 and 3.1s growing up

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fatnhangry8@reddit

Yes

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Glum_Entrance3221@reddit

I used them all!

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Plantayne@reddit

Our first computer was some kind of PCJr. clone that ran DOS and only had a 5.25 floppy drive, no HDD lol Played all the Sierra adventure games on it though plus a bunch of other DOS classics. Great memories

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Outchee@reddit

Started with hard but now that I’m older more floppy

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drenched12@reddit

Semi

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batmanshypeman@reddit

Organ Trail on a little grey floppy disk was the extent of my computer class.

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Chaps_and_salsa@reddit

Cassette tapes

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Main_Dimension7191@reddit

Dude we got Commodore 64s in Elementary school. All of the above.

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AndroidDoctorr@reddit

Yes

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All_Usernames_Tooken@reddit

The save icon is a floppy disk in my mind always

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jenbenfoo@reddit

Yes 😆 all of the above! My dad worked in IT for a major corporation, so we had a home computer sooner than I think a lot of people at that time did, so he did work from home sometimes, so I saw lots of disks. By the time I was in high school, zip drives were taking off, and I used those thru early college years.

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dailyoracle@reddit

YES.

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DueWish3039@reddit

Tape drives

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daveprogrammer@reddit

The first Oregon Trail I ever played was on an Apple IIe with a green-tinted monitor from one of the 5.25" floppy disks.

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xkind@reddit

Best part of shop class (they had the only 2 computers in our middle school)

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mitchij2004@reddit

Yea!!! The hunting was wild in that one.

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flashtastic@reddit

AppleWin is a great Apple 2e emulator and you can tint the screen to green! I just played Conan:The Barbarian in monochrome green the other day.

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xkind@reddit

I didn't get a floppy disk drive or hard disk drive until later. The first programs I wrote got erased when the computer was turned off. Later I figured out how to hook up a cassette player (like the kind for listening to music) to my TI 99 4a and save my programs to them.

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phoinixpyre@reddit

What no zip drives?

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Electrical-Spend-443@reddit

Mine started off hard but got flopier the older I got

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jgmoxness@reddit

Paper tape on a TTY-33 over acoustic coupler modem ....

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HugeTheWall@reddit

All 3 floppies.

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jdoggg_86@reddit

Both

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Fist4achin@reddit

Hell, I remember data cartridges

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Shad0wF0x@reddit

I've only used the 3.5" one and I think I saw the middle one in school once.

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DareMe603@reddit

I remember using [Datasette ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette) for storage.

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LyonHeart85@reddit

Both

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SweetCosmicPope@reddit

Both. My first computer had a 5.25 floppy drive on it. The next one had both 5.25 and 3.5" "floppy" and then finally, my next childhood computer had 3.5," zip drive, and CD Rom with PD drive (later upgraded to a cd burner)

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afleetingmoment@reddit

Our age group saw the entire progression from 5.25" disks to the cloud. It's really wild to think about, and all in such a brief historical period.

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kirby056@reddit

It's also wild that I've lived through the period where it was a luxury to have a VCR to you'd go to your friend's house specifically because they had a gaming console to entire series being on DVD to physical media is basically dead. Also: making engines smaller because gas was expensive to making cars bigger because gas was cheap to (somehow) only making big crossovers because taxes are low to electric trucks and SUVs that are somehow bigger than the trucks 25 years ago because fuck everyone outside our vehicle. I buck both of these trends: still only buy physical media and I have two GS guzzling VW Golfs, one hatch, one wagon.

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itsasnowconemachine@reddit

I had to look up [PD drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-change_Dual) . Neat.

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zyberteq@reddit

My dad had a subscription where we got a box of 5,25" floppies every quarter (iirc) with games and software on it. It was the best!

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apresmoiputas@reddit

i had a love hate relationship with zip drives. I hated the click of death. too many people lost their work on it during college

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astoneworthskipping@reddit

Yes. I remember getting a zip disc and being thrilled I could hold more than 30 word documents on it. Had an MP3 player in high school, late 90s. I forget the brand/kind. But I loved it. Held a maximum of 23 songs if I was lucky.

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Mrjohnson1100@reddit

Yes

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AUorAG@reddit

Tape

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androidguy50@reddit

Floppy disks but also used a Tandy computer with tape cassette for data storage (in Junior High School).

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Mallengar@reddit

Yeah, and I was still using them up till at least 2006

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Luna_Moth79@reddit

Floppy and remember the change over to hard.

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SkunkMonkey@reddit

$300 for my first 10 Megabyte HD. I was rocking!

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droid_mike@reddit

You're never going to use all that space...

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username32768@reddit

Those little blue pills are amazing, right?! :-D

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Inevitable-While-577@reddit

Same.

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RealDanielJesse@reddit

Punch cards and tape drives!

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AnonRedditUser123456@reddit

Both

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DYTTrampolineCowboy@reddit

Didn't use a lot of 8-inchers, but being a kid who sharpened her teeth on Apple II and CP/M on a Kaypro, I've definitely used a lot of 5¼- and 3½-inch floppies. Hard disks (Winchesters for those folks outside the U.S.) didn't really become standard until the late 1980's and early 1990's.

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Wardman66@reddit

Tape cassette also

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Cwytank@reddit

I remember both.

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Caborojito@reddit

Both

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CommissionerGordon12@reddit

Both, floppy first. Then the larger hard disk, then the smaller hard disk. Mac to pc iirc

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No_Ship2353@reddit

All three and yes all are called floppy disks!

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mrtouchybum@reddit

No one I know called them hard disks. They were all floppy’s. The hard disk was your HDD in the computer.

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RedditSucksDick86@reddit

Floppies. Even the hard shell disks were called floppies. I want floppies to make a comeback.

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stataryus@reddit

My first computer class (1994) used floppies. My 2nd class (1995) used hard.

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dudeitsmeee@reddit

The actual mid-size floppies 5.2-inch, via a Commodore 64 and some apple II's at school we played with LOGO on, then 3.5's when my dad upgraded the c64 to a commodore Amiga. We were always the family with home computer. Dad was a certified computer nut. (and MIT grad) Then of course in college it was 3.5's on a PC and Iomega ZIP disks when I studied graphic design. I do remember in a pinch running to the school store (happened to be i the same building as the design classes) and praying they had a mac formatted 3.5.. phew they did. Got one project emergency preserved on it. It might have been a ZIP disk "click of death" issue.. Now everything is all thumb drive, SSD, or cloud..... It's up in the cloud!

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archiewaldron@reddit

5 1/4” floppies. The hard plastic encased floppies were like alien technology when they appeared.

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StickyThumbs79@reddit

Cassette and floppy

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Scottnothot12@reddit

TRS-80 cassettes, then moved on to 8" floppy's...then 5.25 by 1985....Panasonic DD made with a hole punch

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SnooRobots116@reddit

That special specific orange or blue or green lighting of the letters on older system, before being white on black screen. Some systems screens had some mesh fabric over them to kill the brightness of the screens

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SnooRobots116@reddit

Used all three in my lifetime but have few of the solid 3” in my possession in a small case of my writing

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HornyPepsiCan@reddit

CDs

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drewcandraw@reddit

We had 5.25” floppies, and by the time I got to art school, they were calling the 3.5” disks floppies as well, despite their lack of floppiness.

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Saltallica@reddit

Yes. I have described to my 9 year old how incredible it is that his Switch cards equate to thousands of these.

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satismo@reddit

yes

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Meddlemaker79@reddit

These are all "floppy" disks. I remember correcting my teacher in 3rd grade (1987) when she called a 3.5" floppy a "hard" disk. I started using a computer in 1983 or so when my dad, who worked at IBM, brought home a dual monitor (monochrome and CGA, side by side), dual floppy (two full size 5.25" drives), 64kb RAM IBM PC. I remember "boot disks" to load software. No hard drive. No mouse. But we did have a PC joystick and Microsoft Flight Simulator (which was less a game than a real simulator so I always stalled or crashed my plane) and a game written by Michael Crichton with a talking parrot named Paco called "Amazon." I always ended up being killed by guerrilla soldiers in the jungle. Those were the days.

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PhilosopherDismal191@reddit

My first pc was an apple Macintosh II se, 3.5 disk drive, 5 megabytes of storage and a 300 baud modem.

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bornagain-stillborn@reddit

Gotta love the ol' Oregon Trail on that make-shift fan of a 5.25 in. floppy.

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apathetic_peacock@reddit

Don’t forget Zip disks!

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fezzikjoghismemory@reddit

this image starts pretty soft, but truely goes hard .. .

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Deazul@reddit

Those are floppies, hard disks are internal drives. I had an 8086 laptop (still do) that only runs on floppies! It's a beast!

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roosell1986@reddit

5.25" in my earliest days followed by many 'lovely' years of 3.5".

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navcom20@reddit

My life in "disks": Floppy to hard to Bernoulli to laser to compact to mini to DVD to HD/Blu-Ray wars

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5280_TW@reddit

Yes

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Streaker4TheDead@reddit

Floppy

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defhermit@reddit

those are all floppy disks. hard disks are internal non-removable drives.

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Sidetrackbob@reddit

Both. It's funny because now people refer to the 3.5 as a "floppy disk" wth!? Honestly...

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Thank you! Looks like there are only a handful of us who refer to them as hard disks.

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Sidetrackbob@reddit

I think with the newer generation(s) there's so much of their language which is idiomatic and is also very insular that there's so many things that are incorrect because of either context and also they are just completely eschewing the English language as is. It's as if they have absolutely ignored whatever existed before the rise of Millennials and Gen Z and seriously have no concern for proper English at all and simply rely on Chat gtp or whatever damn app or AI if they're ever in need of doing anything remotely academic. We're going headfirst into Idiocracy at bullet train speeds!

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thelaststarebender@reddit

Yes, to all of them. That picture represents my experience in elementary, middle, then high school.

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coffee_robot_horse@reddit

You used 8" disks?

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thelaststarebender@reddit

I remember playing computer games in the library in elementary school (85-91) that used the big floppy disks. I don’t remember what the game was but it played “Anchors away” as its opening music. :)

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coffee_robot_horse@reddit

Oh wow. I just assumed that by the time computers were in schools it would've been the 5.25" era. This thread is enlightening.

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thelaststarebender@reddit

Don’t take my word for it. My memory is quite unreliable. But that big black disk caught something in my mind.

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French1220@reddit

My first computer experiences all involved soft floppies. This was first grade for me, 1988. Hard floppies were the norm until high school.

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ordermann@reddit

Yes.

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UFSansIsMyBrother@reddit

Hated it... but very little, did I use the hard floppy, square disk.

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ThatOldDuderino@reddit

All three actually

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MailSalt4828@reddit

And then they became Zip disks. They never stopped with the double entendres.

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ToBePacific@reddit

There is no hard disk in this picture.

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DDESTRUCTOTRON@reddit

U make my floppy disk a hard drive 🥺💖

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blacfd@reddit

Both

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Hemightbegiant@reddit

All of them, and I loved Zipdisks.

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leftynate11@reddit

Hard disks? I don’t remember them ever being called anything other than floppy disks. And I remember them all.

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Transconan@reddit

✏️ 📃

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W0nk0_the_Sane00@reddit

I grew up knowing that both are floppy disks only one is in a smaller, more protective casing.

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manthursaday@reddit

I never had a computer that used 5.25 floppies, but in elementary school the apple IIe computer lab definitely used them. Black and green Oregon trail for life! My first pc in the mid 90s had 2.5 floppy drive and a CD rom drive. Second pc had 3.5 floppy and a dvd reader/cd-rw. College computer had 3.5 floppy and dvd-rw. And I had an external zip 250. All the pcs in my college computer labs had built in zip 100 drives. So most of my college papers were saved on zip 100 discs. Those Btw, though much harder than 3.5 floppies were still floppies. They had a very thin floppy disk inside. By the time I graduated college on the Tommy Boy plan, flash drives had taken over.

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JFrankParnell64@reddit

I started my computer interactions in the days of punch cards.

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wendythewonderful@reddit

My first computer was a TRSDOS 80 so does that answer your question

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Unit-235@reddit

Those are all floppies.

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CaptShrek13@reddit

Chances are that everyone old enough to use a computer has clicked on the virtual version of these, but anybody under a certain age has no idea that's based on a real physical object.

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Cedge1738@reddit

In my ass or out?

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ProjectFoxx@reddit

I grew up with all of them.

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TheGutterNut@reddit

All 3! What’s 3 1/2 inches, floppy, and fun to insert?

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iLiveInyourTrees@reddit

Yes

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gmoney1259@reddit

"Grow up"?

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Responsible_Ad1976@reddit

8” and 5.25” floppy disks. I had the Nibble Notch tool to use the other side of the disk.

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ddwood87@reddit

Had hard discs when I was young, but now can only get floppies....wait

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djloid2010@reddit

All of the above

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Connect2020@reddit

When I was growing up it was usually hard

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9600_PONIES@reddit

First one, then the other

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Super_iron_kid@reddit

Used 5,25 on Commodore-c64, Apple ii, IBM-pc and so on. Last time I used 3.5in was 2018 on an older server system. The 8in I have never used but I have seen a system with it.

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MaxPower303@reddit

All three.

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edwardothegreatest@reddit

Cassette drive

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SemanDemon22@reddit

I mean this is illustrative of Xennials no? we had them all. And now we use none.

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RoundSetting3402@reddit

Yes

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leggypepsiaddict@reddit

All of them.

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CockroachNo2540@reddit

I only ever had computers with the orange (5.25”) and blue (3.5”), but I remember seeing the black ones at my dad’s office.

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CockroachNo2540@reddit

I’m also not Xennial (1973).

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Lost_In_Detroit@reddit

All 3 but you were SUPER COOL if you had a Jazz drive.

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ImmaDrainOnSociety@reddit

Grew up with 3.5's. We had a 386 with a 5.4 drive, and a GEOS operating system, at one point but the drive never got used. School had a few Commodore 64's around for novelty. Not sure if I ever saw a 8in IRL.

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SnarkTheAnarch@reddit

Floppy, hard, I'm the guy with the gun.

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Thisisjuno1@reddit

All lol I was in college a while.. it was fun

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70sRitalinKid@reddit

None of these. A single zenith CRT TV with a clicker remote

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whitewail602@reddit

These are all floppy disks.

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hallofgamer@reddit

Tape drive

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Solar_Hummingbirrd@reddit

I remember when I wanted to get a computer when I was 10 and my parents claimed they would never be useful. I like to bring that up to them now and again when they call me because they can't get their keyboard to work or ask how to download something on their phone.

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kohrtoons@reddit

I used 5.25 at my elementary schools afterschool game club. Played a lot of Oregon Trail. Later when I got my own PC we had the 2.5s and I would go to computer shows to buy freeware games. Yea I know they were free but internet was not a thing for most people.

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TheSouthsideSlacker@reddit

Started floppy got hard as I became a teenager.

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Sandwichlover7504@reddit

Both

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NonRangedHunter@reddit

5.25 on the commodore 64, but 3.5 on the computer.

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votenope@reddit

Cassette

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BeapMerp@reddit

Floppies.. the smaller ones. Got to go to computer camp one summer and learned some Pascal. Best (only) summer camp experience.

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rogerm3xico@reddit

All three. Also had a zip drive.

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Overall-Category-159@reddit

My floppy disk became hard but it was smaller

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slowandlow714@reddit

In 1981 I took a tour of a credit card processing company's mainframe computer rooms. The tour guide showed us how they were replacing tape drives with hard drives. The hard drive units were roughly the size of a washing machine. I can't remember the storage capacity but I bet it was less than a current PC hard drive.

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EidolonRook@reddit

I had to park my damned C drive before I turned my computer off.

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GarethGazzGravey@reddit

All of them

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knight-of-the-pipe@reddit

I’m working at the place who’s fortunes where amassed buy making the little metal window for the smaller floppy. It’s crazy how a business can just dry up overnight because of some new invention. The CD

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ThaFoxThatRox@reddit

Both of them. They used to sell them in different colors in packs. I thought I was so fly. Lol

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Shipkiller-in-theory@reddit

Punch cards, tape drives, then 10.5, 8, & 5.25 floppy drives, 3.5 diskettes, Jazz drives, Zip drives. IDE drives (5mb - I will never fill this up!), SCSI Drives, etc. fast forward to 10TB SSDs in our JABOD -200TB total.

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stangAce20@reddit

5 inch and 3 1/2 inch

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coffee_robot_horse@reddit

The disk inside is floppy, although the casing is hsrder. The disks inside a computer are solid metal so definitely hard.

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Secret_Paper2639@reddit

I had a 286, it was so satisfying having a b and c drives.

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coffee_robot_horse@reddit

A company my company supports has a network drive mapped as A:. It's sick and wrong.

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Vibriobactin@reddit

Yep. Tandy 1000tx, 286, 386, 486 and then Intel stepped up it’s game with the Pentium.

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bravo_ragazzo@reddit

What you have there is an 8” floppy used in business machines. My dad had these at the law office’s mainframe. The 2nd disk is a 5.25” used in home computers. The last disk is the 3.5” disk that came out in the late 80s (Mac plus etc).

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lifegoodis@reddit

Yes

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activelyresting@reddit

Those are all floppies. A hard disk is the internal storage in your computer. But yeah, I even remember the 8" ones, my first day of computing class in school, the teacher held one up to show us a floppy disk. I put my hand up and pulled out a 3.5" floppy from my schoolbag, and basically taught the class from that point 😂 (the teacher was a social studies teacher who had zero clue about computers and was just reading out of a textbook)

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lolweakbro@reddit

I am 52 years old and I've never seen an 8" floppy disk in my life prior to this photo. No idea such a thing ever existed. What's the deal? Were they like super short-lived or something?

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coffee_robot_horse@reddit

They were used in industry throughout the 1970s, back when computers were expensive and rare.

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activelyresting@reddit

Tbh I'm not sure, I really only interacted with the one in my classroom at school (which occurred *after* 3¼" were already common). And I started out with an Apple ][e that had cassette drives, and a c64. My dad and his brother were both computer nerds going way back so we were very early adopters of tech stuff. I don't recall 8" being common at all for home use. (Born 79)

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SkunkMonkey@reddit

8" floppies and COBOL. Ug. I do not miss that shit.

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tehans@reddit

Yep and also saving to cassette tape on TRS80 and Commadore

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Aysche@reddit

I had to miss recess at least once in 4th grade because my "Say No to NAFTA" report kept disappearing from the floppy disc I was saving it to, so I had to keep re-typing it in the lab multiple times. That sucked.

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Total_Roll@reddit

My first job using a computer was using an Apple II SE with the integrated screen and a 3.5 inch slot. My first laptop was a IBM ThinkPad with both a 3.5 and a CD reader but not burner. I used it primarily for PowerPoint presentations. When I got a new laptop my presentations were too big to fit on a 3.5 (and no CD burner) so I had to track down an external zip drive. It took hours to get everything moved over. Then when my next computer had no 3.5 drive I had to get an external 3.5 drive and transfer almost 100 disks to CD. Then transferring the CDs to a One Drive. Hopefully I'm done for a while.

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coffee_robot_horse@reddit

Always had 3.5" disks at home. My dad worked for a PC company so the first computer I was allowed to use at home was on those. School was on BBC Micros with 5.25" disks until I was about 8, then they got Archimedeses with 3.5" drives. The only time I've seen 8" disks IRL is at a company where they had everything ever back to the 1960s stored in a fireproof safe.

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JaniceRossi_in_2R@reddit

All three because it progressed *very* rapidly

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veryspicypickle@reddit

Both

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bump909@reddit

[Don’t copy that floppy!](https://youtu.be/YgSH-0Ii7dk?si=95uUEUkpohmg-1_Y)

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MetalMittensOfDeath@reddit

Both.

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SufficientQuail2577@reddit

Went from floppy to hard as I got older.

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sanityjanity@reddit

A hard disk is made from metal, and is typically kept inside the machine. These are all floppy discs

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solar-garlic1776@reddit

All 3

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ThePlanner@reddit

Transition era, baby! We had both!

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Dic_Horn@reddit

A little from column A,B and C. Mostly B&C.

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-_-__-_-___-@reddit

We used punchers to be able to use both sides.

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HausuGeist@reddit

Started with the middle.

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Little-Extension261@reddit

Yea! Loved the sound they made!

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itchybeats@reddit

Both because I'm 30 We had floppy then hard The erection generation

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CreativeCritter@reddit

Tapes …. And those three

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dumpmaster42069@reddit

None of us used 8” floppies.

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Boil-san@reddit

Most of my floppy usage were the 3.5" floppies, with 5.25" floppies being used on Apple // computers in junior High & High School, never used any 8" floppies, but I did take a Data Processing class in high school that had us make & use punch cards for a minute...! ;\^p

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Due-Dot6450@reddit

Cassettes.

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Great_Reaction3629@reddit

ALl

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SoldadoAruanda@reddit

Tape

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inorite234@reddit

Add: Zip Drives, Jazz Drives, Compact Flash, CD, CDRW, DVDRW, Thumbdrives and external Hard drives and you've described my life.

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StrawberryBlndVixen@reddit

WHEN Computers hit our schools and homes for personal use, we had floppy discs 💾 MS DOS Etc.. Yep, Clearly Gen X here. 👋🏻

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dragon_fiesta@reddit

I had the Ghostbusters game on the big one

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bzzzt_beep@reddit

That sound that teaches us patience ... [🎶 EMMmm EMMmm EMMmm 🎶](https://youtu.be/ZnFQZa8SKP8)

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muffadel@reddit

Yes.

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oldtownmaine@reddit

Binary punch cards 🥺😢😭

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4x4Welder@reddit

Oh boy, time to load Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe. And die. I am now realizing that my past knowledge of DOS prompts has been overwritten.

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Maeglin75@reddit

I missed out on the giant 8" floppies, but had a lot of fun with the floppy 5.25" disks on C64/C128 and later on 286 and 486 PCs. You could make double sided 5.25"-SD out of cheaper single sided ones, by punching a second notch into them with a special tool. (Or cut it with scissors if you are brave.) Trying the old disks decades later, many of the SD-Floppies for the Commodores are still good, while most of the HD-Floppies for PC have lost their data. 3.5"-HD seem to hold up pretty good.

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blue888raven@reddit

I've used all three, but only the 3.5 in my own computer. Man, those bring back such a feeling of nostalgia... sharing DOS games, music, etc. Oddly, I kind of miss them.

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wobbegong@reddit

Yes.

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U-S-A-GAL@reddit

No disks?

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Nowardier@reddit

Hard floppy disks. I never learned how to use them though. By the time we got a computer, it had a CD-ROM drive.

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hornetjockey@reddit

1.5 megabyte “double density” disks. Hard to believe now.

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PTSDeepEnd@reddit

Best gaming experience I've ever had was on an Amiga 500 in the 90s. There was not a better feeling than when your dad's mate in the pub had 100 bootleg floppy disks with games on it for a tenner. Take them home and put them in one by one to see what games you'd got. Sensible Soccer. James Pond. Prince Of Persia. Good times.

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rawknrol@reddit

Yes

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jaybee8787@reddit

My god it was fun to play with the metal guard on that smallest floppy disk.

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GottaUseEmAll@reddit

Those are all floppy disks.

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JFace139@reddit

I had floppy disks until about 5th grade on school computers, at home we never had a computer

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Wise_Monitor_Lizard@reddit

Both, I'm 40.

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mordred_crighton_du@reddit

What are these futuristic items???? Punch cards baby!!!

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Stayvein@reddit

None of your business.

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JohnsonMathi17@reddit

I’d like to say both.

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ManBoyKoz@reddit

Yes

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lizardkg@reddit

Oh, man. I used them. I even used tapes for my ZX-81.

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lizcopic@reddit

Still have mine from when Grandpa taught me! https://preview.redd.it/jmd4nmocxhkc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af772494caa87e9bd2c60f29392933df5518a1ba

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knowone1313@reddit

All three and their all floppy disks.

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Nook_of_the_Cranny@reddit

I went from orange to blue…. Don’t remember the black…

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dcott44@reddit

I mean... both? Somehow I still have the knowledge in my brain that it's 3.5" and 5.2" floppy disks. I guess they're both intrinsic to my childhood. But let's get real, when Zip drive's came out, that was what I begged my parents for. 100 MB? sign me up...

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firemouth55@reddit

I had a class in high school that required a Zip disk. I finally broke down and bought Zip drive for myself. It’s where I put a lot of my Napster music.

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iAMRICKJAMESMF@reddit

Floppy

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Akash7713@reddit

Uncle's disk. It was hard and floppy at the same time

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WoodenMonkeyGod@reddit

Yes

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Just_Mumbling@reddit

Punch cards and punched terminal tape - then all of these. I’m old..

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Myfourcats1@reddit

All of the above.

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omnibossk@reddit

Yes, but we never used to call the 3.5 hard. They were all called floppies. Sometimes we named them by their size

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PrinceCastanzaCapone@reddit

Both

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stinkyrobot@reddit

Cassette tapes.

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jjacks1327@reddit

All of the above

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BreathFuzzy6919@reddit

Both. Tho it's only now that I've learnt what the difference between them are!

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Deep_Mention_4423@reddit

All of them. And a bit later, remember zip disks?

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oldmilwaukie@reddit

Yes

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Bulky-Internal8579@reddit

I ordered my first computer out of an ad in Popular Mechanics - a Sinclair ZX81 with 4k of memory and I recorded my moon landing program on a Radio Shack cassette player I connected to it - so when I restarted the computer, I could have the incredible time saver of playing the recording into the computer to load the program - which worked over half the time if I was lucky.

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Over_Intention8059@reddit

I remember punch cards.

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djackson404@reddit

All the above. I owned an IMSAI 8080 microcomputer at one point, with dual Shugart 8" SSDD floppy drives. Later on, dual Tandon 8" DSDD floppy drives. Later, a Shugart 30MB 14" dual-platter hard drive. Also an 8" hard drive, can't remember anymore who the manufacturer was. All the rest came later with my first PC/XT clone.

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Pegomastax_King@reddit

Boff

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bunnyholder@reddit

I had nothing floppy, everything was hard.

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Rough_Ad4416@reddit

Blurry images of porn on a secret floppy was an essential part of puberty, tool 29 minutes to fully render and download

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sirensavior@reddit

Floppy. I made some with tons of “mood board” type pics on it. Wish I still had them (and a compatible computer –would love to see what I saved). Also school reports.

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reeferthetuxedocat@reddit

What about cassettes? Are they older or younger than floppies?

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Dreadful_Angel@reddit

Both.

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Goudinho99@reddit

I told some whipper snapper in the office that's why we generally don't use A: and B: drives because they were reserved for these. They'd heard of floppy disks but this was a surprise to them!

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thetoastmonster@reddit

Tapes. Then 3" disks. Then 3.5" disks.

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AmateurExpert__@reddit

5.25” were the mainstream at primary and middle school. They phased in a few Acorn A3000 machines as I was leaving, and high school had 8 pc compatibles - for which we all got given a 3.5”. Felt like we were working for NASA.

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pigfeedmauer@reddit

yes

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aj_star_destroyer@reddit

I remember getting a ZIP Disk in college and thinking 250 MB was like an airplane hangar where i only had a few suitcases to store. I do remember the 5 1/4 floppies and how they would bend if you didn’t line them up just right with the A: drive slot. I

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Somerset76@reddit

Floppy disks

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Shagggadooo@reddit

Those are all floppy disks...

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skawarrior@reddit

Cassette tapes, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum with 48kb of RAM ruled the UK home computer scene for quite a while

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Heidi_ann76@reddit

These were all floppies, but the first ones I used were the 5.25", until high school when the smaller ones came out.

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Sewers_folly@reddit

We used magnetic tapes to save info for our timex Sinclair before these floppy things.

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Holeysweaterguy@reddit

We had the middle floppies in bad school computers but at home and then in college the smaller plastic cased ones.

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visceralthrill@reddit

Yes lol.

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MyNameIsDaveToo@reddit

Yes

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monokoi@reddit

Yes.

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Moxie_Stardust@reddit

They coexisted for a pretty long span...

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

I had a Mac, it only took the little hard guys.

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SteakJones@reddit

I had a Mac then too. They did take 3.5 in floppies. They were just hard. The “hard disk” always referred to the hard drive. Term has always been floppy disks. Even the ones that weren’t floppy.

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

I’m learning here that my family incorrect called them hard disks when I was growing up. That’ll always be what I know them as though

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SteakJones@reddit

The true mark of a Xennial. 😂 I remember the look of confusion on the face of the grocer when I asked if they had any “purple” onion. Guy was like “you mean red?” I’m like no.. my mom said purple. It’s purple. 😆

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saxoccordion@reddit

lmao my wife called the veggie drawer in our fridge “the rotter” and legit thought that was the universal name of that… uh, no haha

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clamnaked@reddit

Omg. I corrected my mom on this and she made look it up. So I did and now I know that onions of that color predate the word purple in the English language. That was classified as red. Which is strange because the same thing goes for the color orange which is named after the fruit but redheads have orange hair.

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Apprehensive_Hat8986@reddit

Some redheads actually have red hair, not orange. Mine is orange, but my sister's is a much more vibrant red.

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clamnaked@reddit

Okay? My husband has a very beautiful red to orange pube fro but that still doesn’t change the history of words.

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Procrasturbating@reddit

Brown is just dark orange as well.

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JGG5@reddit

I love red onions, but they are undeniably purple and not red.

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SteakJones@reddit

I agree. But the sign says red in the store. Very confusing when you’re 20 and never really grocery shopped before.

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damn_dragon@reddit

Same with red cabbage.

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

My mom said purple too lol

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SteakJones@reddit

🤣 cheers my friend ![gif](giphy|BPJmthQ3YRwD6QqcVD|downsized)

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Apprehensive_Hat8986@reddit

So when presented with a factual correction, you're opting to perpetuate ignorance?

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

So when you have the choice of writing anything you want, you choose to go with condescending dbag?

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philnolan3d@reddit

Yeah macs came out later.

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dorky2@reddit

Our computers at my K-8 school were Apple IIe, and they used the 5.25" disks. I actually didn't use a 3.5" until high school, though I know they were around. My school got the brand new Apples in 1987 when I was in kindergarten, and replaced them in 1996 right after I graduated 8th grade.

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xSlick-Tx@reddit

Yes

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saxoccordion@reddit

You must be fucking with us by using the word “hard disk” lmao

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SundaySuffer@reddit

Still got my commadore 128D

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Bright-Internal229@reddit

![gif](giphy|13rnKUt0bn5LVe|downsized)

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DaySoc98@reddit

Medium floppy.

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davwad2@reddit

Both.

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Mini_Mega@reddit

I've never seen the biggest one. I started out using the middle size.

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JColeman05@reddit

Both actually. The big floppies were all elementary school and the smaller "hard" floppies started popping up in middle school.

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OrgasmChasmSpasm@reddit

I had to use those big bastards for school in a pre-dos computer made in the late 70s or very early 80s.

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PumpkinSpice2Nice@reddit

We had the ‘3 and a half inch floppys’ at home and my school when I started in my first year had computers which took the ‘5 and a half inch floppys’. Their computers were older and crappier than the one we had at home. Plus my cousin who was older gave us about 50 pirated games.

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Ok_Signal7000@reddit

Lives to see all three kinds.

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Gloomy_Anywhere_5490@reddit

I remember riding our bikes between friends places floppies in hand. Gonna make some copies of those floppies, swap games and shit. Good times

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BurnzillabydaBay@reddit

Floppy

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Tinker107@reddit

Floppies, yes, and they were a big step up from the cassette drives for the Commodore 64.

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thewander@reddit

Oof. Yeah. The 8”. Yeah

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Brasticus@reddit

Yes.

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Dhonagon@reddit

Floppy on a commodore

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times_zero@reddit

I didn't learn how to use a computer until high school, so by that point they were just using 3.5" floppies.

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stillmusiqal@reddit

All of em!

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mundoid@reddit

Both?

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EchoingInTheVoid@reddit

All of them!!

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luckyLonelyMuisca@reddit

Yes

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Sad_BuisnesMan@reddit

I’m prolly gonna kill myself

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Salmundo@reddit

Punchcards.

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Salmundo@reddit

None of those are hard disks. And hard disks go vac to at least the 1950’s

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phathead08@reddit

My first experience with these, I played Oregon Trail on floppy disc. I think I was 7.

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Alan_M_C@reddit

We used to call the small 3.5" ones Stiffys'

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Adorable_Is9293@reddit

LOL what is a “hard disk” OP? You mean the 3.5 inch floppy disc? The disk inside the cartridge is floppy. That’s why it’s called a floppy disc. All of those are floppy discs. As distinguished from compact discs and digital video discs.

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NorseYeti@reddit

All, plus ditto, zip, tape…

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Silver-Suit-8711@reddit

Wasn't there some double density version of the 5.25s bringing them 512k.. just writing what my brain vaguely remembers. And putting the provided tags on the cutout write protected them.

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NetHacks@reddit

I remember getting promotional 3-1/2" disks in cereal boxes for the movie independence day.

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GetOffMyLawn1729@reddit

DECtape.

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0110110111@reddit

3.5” was the A: drive and the 5.25” was the B: drive. Mostly had the 3.5”, but I remember having Commander Keen on 5.25”.

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ObjectiveAny8437@reddit

*Fighting the urge to not be childish*

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FirnHandcrafted@reddit

Both.

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jncheese@reddit

Cassette tapes

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Mountain_Stress176@reddit

Yes

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Tall_Stomach1851@reddit

Very several times in late 90s. Used to think oneday I have to learn how to use it

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RebelCricket@reddit

Both

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Prettypuff405@reddit

I used all three The top one was “Oregon Trail”

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grahsam@reddit

All three are floppies. I used 5.25 and 3.5 disks. Never used the really big ones.

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UberKaltPizza@reddit

Yes

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OriginalVayl@reddit

5 1/4 Floppy -> 3.5 Floppy (but it was funny because I used to call that the hard disk when I was like 10)... I remember when my father took me out to buy a $480 hard drive from a Price Club, it was 4" thick and stored a ginormous 80MB . Got to stop using so many floppys after we could "store anything" for now

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skull_duggery_1701D@reddit

Yes.

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Individual_Baby_2418@reddit

I remember the big floppies from early elementary school, but by the time I was saving my own documents, we use the little ones.

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moopsy75567@reddit

Hard discs for school stuff like essays and floppy discs for games at school (mostly Oregon Trail and Odell Down Under)

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nfssmith@reddit

The 5.25’s & the 3.5’s only for me. Saw a rack of the larger ones at someone’s house once, long after they ever had a machine that could use that size

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DinosaurEars@reddit

Started w cards.

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bob_law_blaw@reddit

All of them

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dragon_morgan@reddit

I remember in first grade we had the floppy kind for computer class and we were told not to put our fingers through the hole which of course a bunch of six year olds immediately did. Very few of them lasted a week lol. After that it was always the 3.5in ones. I had a translucent plastic blue one that I used for all my *favorite* files, which had to be peak late 90s of me.

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MyLastFuckingNerve@reddit

Yes

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Drakar_och_demoner@reddit

Both.

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OxygenDiGiorno@reddit

OP doesn’t know what the term “hard disk” means

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Thereminz@reddit

there weren't too many 8" drives on personal computers although they did exist. 5.25 floppy surprised no one has said 3.5 "Diskette" although most people called it a floppy disk as well.

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Acmav289@reddit

All 3, my dad liked buying old computer. Wish we hadn’t thrown them out some are now worth a fortune.

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robraises@reddit

Both

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Kookiecitrus55555@reddit

Ya see cause floppy discs are kinda expensive.......can I borrow your underpants?

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therealhood@reddit

Cassette tapes

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Eeyor-90@reddit

Yes…all of the above

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Standard-Injury-113@reddit

So that’s why they were called floppy. The technology before it was hard 🤯🤣 92 baby. Never heard or seen hard disks until just now. If I wasn’t told, my common sense would of assumed it was vinyl or something related

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TheOneWhoReadsStuff@reddit

I remember floppy disks. They were around. I used them to play a couple of old obscure dos games at a friends house. They were ascii based iirc. I wouldn’t say I grew up with them. We had an Atari before the nes came out, and I remember my grandfather had OLD computers in his garage that didn’t run floppy disks, but cassette tapes instead. Also, I used a few of those 3.5 floppy’s to save homework to for a class a few times. I don’t know if that’s what you’re calling “hard disks”. They were always called floppy by everyone I knew. A hard disk was a hard drive. I loaded games with those. (ie Doom when it came out.). I vaguely remember windows before Windows 95 came out. I forget the number title it was given.

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Smallberrians@reddit

Both, born in '70. Was at a CA State Surplus sale in the 80's and they had a huge floppy disk. Seemed like it must have been 10" square.

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OutcomeLegitimate618@reddit

I have used every one of those in my lifetime. I'm so lucky to have seen so many iterations of tech.

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legoheadman-@reddit

I started with the smaller blue one but my dad had an old computer that ran with the big black ones for his work that had some text adventure games that I loved

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Bonzo4691@reddit

When I grew up the only discs we knew about were slipped.

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Fast_Eddie_50@reddit

Which one on these size disks did F-15 Strike Eagle come on?

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MihaelJKeehl@reddit

Good ol B drive

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Mangler51@reddit

And you clearly did not grow up with anything in this picture lmao

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

I grew up with 3.5. The small ones were called hard disks at times to distinguish them from the 5.25s.

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Speedlimit200@reddit

They were never called hard disks. They were 8", 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks. Hard disk/drive is the internal storage drive. Mac or PC.

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Mangler51@reddit

Never heard that in my life. All of them in the picture were called floppy disks I was born in 77, used all for at pictured

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Born in the same year. I only used the 3.5s, we had a Mac

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Mangler51@reddit

Used Mac as well at school, still called floppy

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GrantSRobertson@reddit

I grew up with cassette tapes. You plugged audio jacks into the side of a cassette tape recorded, and the cassette tape recorded the tones put out by the Radio Shack Model 1, and could then decode those tones to load the program back into the computer. My first computer support success was figuring out that you had to record to the cassette at one volume, and play back at a different volume for the computer to be able to properly decode the tones.

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Harmonious_Peanut@reddit

Yup and before that, learning programming we saved onto tapes.

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NCRaineman@reddit

The bigger two are floppies. The small one is a diskette. A "hard disk" is the thing inside older computers.

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Vast_Feature_1009@reddit

I miss my commodore 64

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New-Acanthisitta3855@reddit

Yes.

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sm1else@reddit

They started off floppy but got hard over time.

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Zahkrosis@reddit

We had both in our household until floppy discs got replaced and outphased completely.

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TheMatt561@reddit

It's so funny with technology the smaller they got the more capacity they have

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RepugnantRecords@reddit

Neither I was poor.

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ErichRainbolt@reddit

Yes.

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[-]

nanfanpancam@reddit

Yes

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Numpty712@reddit

At first it was floppy then hard

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ShatterProofDick@reddit

It was always a bit floppy until she looked me in the eyes and touched it.

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pm_me_your_lub@reddit

I had a facepalm moment with my brother when I was real young about how the 3-1/2" was a hard disk. I totally knew better. This discussion was had in front of an 8088 XT in a case with a cool flip-top hood rocking the amber monochrome monitor, not that basic green one everyone else ran.

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BrewItYourself@reddit

Depends on if I was hanging out with your Mom that night...or your sister.

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DestroyerTame@reddit

Mine started floppy then got hard

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cheffartsonurfood@reddit

You know, if ya put a little effort into it you can make the floppy ones hard.

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[-]

ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

28K modems delivered the goods! Very, very slowly

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[-]

madarbrab@reddit

The real ones grew up with 1200 baud modems

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myshtigo@reddit

I started with 2400 baud Hayes! Then got in the big leagues with a 14.4 After I started working I ended up with a usr I think 56.6k

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LiGuangMing1981@reddit

Same. I believe the first modem I had at home was done kind of 2400 baud unit - I remember using it to dial into a BBS.

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SkunkMonkey@reddit

300 baud acoustic couplers baby!

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flashtastic@reddit

I had an Apple 2 with the 2 drives, using the 5.25” floppies and then gradually everything became 3.5. Quest for Glory 2 came on 9 3.5” floppies. Pretty amazing game for ~13mb.

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threeoldbeigecamaros@reddit

They are all floppys. Hard disk refers to a hard drive. I started with the 5.25. I ran cp/m on a DEC Rainbow 100

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LiGuangMing1981@reddit

My dad worked for Honeywell when I was kid, and he sometimes brought home these big circular disks - I think they might have been disk packs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_pack). That's what hard disks were to me.

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[-]

Atgardian@reddit

When I was maybe 10 or 12 my parents got me my first computer -- an Apple IIe. I knew the 3.5" disks were so much better than the 5.25" -- not only did they hold way more info (like 800 KB vs. 128 or something), but the rigid shell and sliding metal cover protected them way better. I remember so many 5.25" floppies getting ruined. So I was sure I wanted the rigid 3.5" drive for my computer, and I asked for a "hard disk drive"... the guy was very confused why I would want one for an Apple IIe, since it cost more than the computer (many thousands of dollars) and held like 10MB or something. Finally I realized even the "hard" 3.5" disks are still called floppy disks, unlike hard disks.

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This-is-Actual@reddit

Left to right, elementary, high school, and college.

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CheekyLass99@reddit

The big one is a floppy, smaller ones are hard disks.

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[-]

patri70@reddit

Yes

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[-]

MolishPust4rd@reddit

OREGON TRAIL

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Sixtyhurts@reddit

Yes.

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Chuckeltard@reddit

Yes

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_Devoted_@reddit

Flop disc Oregon Trail was my first introduction to computers in elementary school.

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Daryltang@reddit

5 1/4”

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Morganafrey@reddit

Although I remember all 3 kinds of floppy disks, the ones that I USED the most as a teenager was the smaller hard version. Because the other floppy disks were more, oh I saw those at school sometimes.

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callalind@reddit

Floppy, like the original floppy, before they started calling hard disks floppy disks (for reasons unbeknownst to me)

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Acceptable_News9801@reddit

All of them

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C0gD1z@reddit

Mostly in the hard disk era but after a few whiskies definitely floppy.

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Stund_Mullet@reddit

When I was younger my disk was floppy, but as I got older it got harder.

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2ant1man5@reddit

All three were around when I grew up I was born in 86.

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philnolan3d@reddit

These are all floppy disks.

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BigPa1960@reddit

Grew up before “disks”. First programs were punched and reloaded on a teletype ASR33 paper tape(~1.5” wide). Had to carry them around with rubber bands around the rolls.

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sambashare@reddit

I always thought the 5.25" were so cool because you had to turn a lever to lock them in. All the machines I ever had used 3.5". Hell, I was using 3.5s up until 2003!

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[-]

aibhilough@reddit

Yes

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Previous_Channel@reddit

I had Wolfenstein spear of destiny and it was on 4 floppys you had switch out at certain points to keep playing

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No-Understanding4968@reddit

All 3

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theeblackestblue@reddit

Yes

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g_t_5_k@reddit

The hardest AND the floppiest

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user_name_unknown@reddit

There were a lot of girls I showed my three and a half in floppy.

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hdoublephoto@reddit

5-and-a-quarters and 3-and-a-halfs

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Orgasmic_interlude@reddit

First floppy, then hard.

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Andralynn@reddit

Yes.

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Mumof3gbb@reddit

All 3

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UnclearObjective@reddit

Oregon Trail

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AnotherOneTossed@reddit

My first computer had a tape drive.

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WhatTheCluck802@reddit

I remember all of these.

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Winds_Of_Uranus@reddit

Number munchers on the 5.25in floppy FTW. It was like 10 floppies.

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manxram@reddit

I remember playing Oregon Trail in the early 90s using the big ass floppy's.

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Helpful_Raspberry715@reddit

Yes.

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seaska84@reddit

Big floppies. Played some primitive racing games.

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Kharilan@reddit

I used floppy discs at work up until a few years ago. Hell one of our machines still stored data on magnetic tape

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HamsterMachete@reddit

Oh, I played Oregon Trail on like 3 of those big black ones. I always understood why they were called floppy discs.

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CaptainHowdy60@reddit

My father sold shareware at computer shows. I don’t think I was around for the 8” floppy’s. We always talked about them in size. Do you want that on 5 1/4 or 3 1/2? lol.

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beave00720002000@reddit

You know it. Apple 2 in elementary. The Oregon trail

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ken1776@reddit

My disks used to be hard, but now they're floppy.

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Upper_Rent_176@reddit

Folpy deesks

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Stickitinandtwist@reddit

We're talking HArd.Drive.

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SourcePrevious3095@reddit

I started with 5.25.

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So-Called_Lunatic@reddit

All 3.

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Chopper242@reddit

2.5, for me.

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zharv12@reddit

I am proud to say I have used every version of saving from elementary school through college and beyond. Floppy disk to hard drives, to the cloud. Wild ride.

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RedeemerKorias@reddit

First came the floppys. Then came the hard. Now its all about the RAM.

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Altruistic-Tank4585@reddit

All three

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ourredsouthernsouls@reddit

That’s a trick question and you know it. Both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 inch disks were floppy disks.

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linkerjpatrick@reddit

Both

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Speedlimit200@reddit

Those are all floppy disks

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Simpawknits@reddit

They're all floppy disks. The hard disk is inside the computer.

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dizug@reddit

Yes

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Simple_Organization4@reddit

Floppy

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ajhe51@reddit

I had the 5.25 in elementary school. It had been phased out in favor of the 3.5 by the time we got our first tamily computer which also had CD-ROM which was pretty new at the time.

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Designer_Emu_6518@reddit

Fuck all of them

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Brief_Sand2286@reddit

My discks were hard when I started and floppy when I finished.

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Various_Acadia_9250@reddit

both

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Ssme812@reddit

Yes.

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Tremfyeh@reddit

Big floppy 5.25 wide disks. Back in my dark everyone had to dir and run to do anything.

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jeffdill2@reddit

All of the above. I still have fond memories of each of them. ☺️

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Educational_Bench290@reddit

AM Varityper used 9" floppies.

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UniqueEnigma121@reddit

3’5 floppies.

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Nnay11963@reddit

From 3rd grade until my freshman year I went through all 3 of these. Played Oregon trail on the big one, some game where you swung through trees like Tarzan on the medium one. And the last one had my first word documents and c++ programs.

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[-]

Ns53@reddit

Yes

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ProcusteanBedz@reddit

All. Big ones first and were common. Middle one was unusual but occasional. Smallest came last and was around for ages.

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hardFraughtBattle@reddit

I grew up with punched paper tape.

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emmettfitz@reddit

I grew up before PC's. I've gone from 5.25 to Gigabyte (s) on cards smaller than my pinky nail.

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HulkSmashHulkRegret@reddit

Like other things, started on floppy then got hard lol

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[-]

IAmLazy2@reddit

Floppies and DOS.

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[-]

Ecstatic-Passion8542@reddit

Both.

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Parking-Iron6252@reddit

They are all floppy -.-

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pmnishi@reddit

Cassette tapes for storage.

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[-]

JagoffSing@reddit

Yes

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Key-Lead-5642@reddit

Our first computer was an apple 2e with the 5 1/2 inch floppy disks. We had jeopardy where after a while the same questions always came back up. And a game called matchsticks. Or we just made stupid dot matrix banners with print shop. Don't kill the color ribbon lol

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jeonteskar@reddit

3.5 inch disks for sure. We also had a dot matrix printer. That said, our computer was old by the standards of the time when we got it in 1988, but playing Police Quest 2 and other Sierra Games is how I learned to spell. We had it up until I was in Middle School in '96.

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Smack2k@reddit

I started with floppy 5 1/4" but by college it was the harder 3 1/2" disks.

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GothhicGoddess@reddit

Yes.

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AQuietViolet@reddit

Yes.

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thishurtsyoushepard@reddit

5” floppy to start with. The small floppy in college lol. I had a Tandy at about 12-13 and learned basic command line skills

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cagonzalez321@reddit

All of them. Goddamnit.

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buresrollerskates@reddit

ZIP DISK BABY

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petergriffin999@reddit

Punch cards.

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Big_Daddy_Haus@reddit

Was lucky to get a state of the art computer with a 40meg hard drive in 1990 😎

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Nightriser@reddit

Yes.

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sajouhk@reddit

Just floppy but they were 8, 5.25 and 3.5. 😉

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Calvincutebutt@reddit

What? Where's the big box of punch cards?

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ChesterDrawerz@reddit

Cassette tapes brah

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gxslim@reddit

5.25" at first. 3.5" by the time I was pirating my own games. Bonus points for punching a hole in the corner for double sizing.

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P4T0bro@reddit

Carmen San Diego!! Just 1 disk

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Informal-Resource-14@reddit

I don’t really remember the largest size but the middle one was around for most of my childhood. I remember my brother playing a bunch of MSDOS computer games on those.

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randomsnowflake@reddit

Yes

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[-]

psilosophist@reddit

Both.

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supergooduser@reddit

1992 I bought an old IBM 8088 and it had a 5.25" drive.... used it to play old DOS games in my basement. Yeah my first brand new PC I bought for myself was in 1996... so used 3.5" floppies for a good while... I had a zip drive in 2000, then probably some USB drive after that... yeah in fact I think I remember having a 128mb USB drive as my "first" which is insane to consider.

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myshtigo@reddit

My first computer was Tandy 1000sx 8086. Later added the math coprocessor to make it an 8088. Also added a 30mb hard drive to impress the chicks, had there been any.

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mysboss@reddit

Floppy

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KittyCubed@reddit

All of them.

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Jokierre@reddit

5 and a quarter, baby!

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No_Names78@reddit

"press play on tape" for a while before floppys

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PappyBlueRibs@reddit

Exactly! I had a cassette tape and no hard drive.

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falsevector@reddit

I used the last 2 and only saw the 1st one as a display in a college office.

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[-]

AnotherCannon@reddit

Yes

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Horizontal_Bob@reddit

Elementary School - Middle School - High School

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Klin24@reddit

Oh sure, leave out punch cards.

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[-]

ScientistDue1515@reddit

I remember seeing an apple computer for the first time and thinking they were dumb for forgetting a floppy disk drive

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[-]

PoopingDogEyeContact@reddit

Who had : Drive a Drive b Drive c And omg I am rich there’s a cd writing drive on here and I even got a rewritable disc for it

Reply

[-]

madcatzplayer5@reddit

USB Flash Drives really didn’t catch on until 2004. So if you did anything in school before 2004, you used at least a 1.44MB floppy disk for saving papers and PowerPoint projects.

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[-]

BobBelchersBuns@reddit

I used all three of these bad boys!

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The_BAHbuhYAHguh@reddit

Big fat floppy disk’s

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81dank@reddit

All 3 plus the cartridge (looked like an Atari game) that went into the front of the computer.

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Nevic1984@reddit

All of 'em.

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[-]

BNerd1@reddit

i grew up with the blue one but that was just named a floppy

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PortlandPetey@reddit

Mine started floppy, then got hard

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[-]

BanzaiTree@reddit

Those are all floppy disks.

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Moobook@reddit

Both! Floppy disks until late high school, then the hards. I keep a case on my desk to freak my coworkers out (I’m the oldest gal at my company 😳) https://preview.redd.it/bwvzmqvfyekc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=37147ec4957deeebe993a697dddb3bd7a7592360

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[-]

Vibriobactin@reddit

It was always fun fiddling with the springs on the 3.5 – floppy. Snap, snap, snap. You knew that it was bad for the disc, but it was so enjoyable and the precursor to the first fidget spinner.

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[-]

Basic-Type7994@reddit

Tandy 1000 sx

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Basic-Type7994@reddit

Punch cards you little punks.

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[-]

Little_Can_728@reddit

Both

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[-]

GlisteningCodpiece@reddit

I remember getting the shareware version of Duke Nukem 1 at the grocery store with my mom. The 90s were weird.

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Vibriobactin@reddit

Remember when computers stopped coming with floppy drives? Booting into reinstall Windows used to worry that I wouldnt have a backup. But yeah. Making those boot cdrom disks was a PIA

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exu1981@reddit

Both

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[-]

Mr_e_in_Las_Vegas@reddit

Yes

Reply

[-]

KamenLee@reddit

I grew up in “these are all floppy disks”

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FancyStranger2371@reddit

Punch cards.

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[-]

MilkSlow6880@reddit

I grew up with 8-tracks. I grew into floppy disks.

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[-]

Upstairs_Lemon2681@reddit

Yes.

Reply

[-]

ZealousidealDog4802@reddit

I have all 3 somewhere in a disk case in my garage. 8 inch floppys from my first PC an apple IIc. It was a hand me down from my uncle.

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Savingskitty@reddit

Those are all floppy disks - it’s what’s on the inside that’s floppy. We had the big floppy disks when I was little - was using 3.5 inch disks still when I was in college. Jump drives didn’t happen until later in college for me.

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[-]

Nothing_new_to_share@reddit

>Those are all floppy disks - it’s what’s on the inside that’s floppy. It's like OP never tore open a 3.5 floppy or something. Some people's kids.

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[-]

Vibriobactin@reddit

Remember how strong that spring was on the 3.5”? That sucker SLAMMED shut

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afx_mono@reddit

Floppy. Hard disks were a major upgrade.

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Vibriobactin@reddit

Of course I remember! AOL sent one or two a month for years! Perfect place to save images. Er, documents. Documents….yeah, that’s right.

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Treacherous_Wendy@reddit

Yes

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[-]

TryPokingIt@reddit

My first computer programs I saw were on cassette tapes

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hexxuss666@reddit

The small one was standard as a kid but any time I got free stuff from the library or computer lab at school they always took the huge ones. Those disc got me the job I have today. Respect 7

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mikrot@reddit

They were hard at first, but then transitioned to floppy as I aged.

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One-Earth9294@reddit

Apple IIE with the 5.25s. I can still hear those clunky startup noises. Really glad computers didn't keep that green dot matrix thing for long I'd be fucking blind now.

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[-]

RaisingAurorasaurus@reddit

Yes

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[-]

Big53Papa@reddit

Both

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[-]

herenowjal@reddit

My first computer came in pieces — with one 5 1/4 floppy drive (and w/o a hard drive).

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frecklearms1991@reddit

I used all three as well. But I didn't start using the floppy discs till I was a Freshmen in HS.

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[-]

bcentsale@reddit

Both. I even had a functioning 5.25" in a PC build as late as around 2010.

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ILikeBumblebees@reddit

Still do, but it's connected via a [KryoFlux](https://www.kryoflux.com/).

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bcentsale@reddit

That's really cool! It's like a USB IDE controller with super powers!

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balladofathinman77@reddit

My first computer was an Apple IIe followed by an Apple IIgs. I remember seeing an add in some computer magazine I subscribed to for 1 MB hard drives that were like $2000 in the ‘80s.

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Misher7@reddit

Floppy at first. Then hard disk in middle school, CD-rom in high school.

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[-]

HermioneMarch@reddit

My first computer (Commodore64)actually had a tape deck. But yes to the floppy discs.

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[-]

upstatepagan@reddit

This picture shows elementary school through college

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[-]

RIP-RiF@reddit

Yes.

Reply

[-]

mateo_201@reddit

There were called floppies and diskettes.

Reply

[-]

Sinderria@reddit

Yes

Reply

[-]

ProfessorOfLies@reddit

We all grew up with technology. Technology is our sibling. We were there for every bit of it

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[-]

QuimbyMcDude@reddit

IBM paper punch cards.

Reply

[-]

LetsNotBuddy@reddit

Both

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[-]

thegrimmemer@reddit

I didn't grew up with them but I did grow up witha computer that runs on them although I don't recall having games for that when I found a floopy disc I just figit the metel plate as it was spring loaded

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[-]

rosekat34@reddit

Both

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[-]

manifest_ecstasy@reddit

Yes

Reply

[-]

Zestyclose-Ad-7576@reddit

Apple ][e, 5.25” floppy disks. I still have it in a tote in my basement.

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[-]

Stardustquarks@reddit

Both

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[-]

MonolithOfTyr@reddit

Started with 5 1/4. I've seen the bigguns but didn't get to use them as they were just really old archives.

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[-]

Uncle_polo@reddit

Remember how fucking sick a STACK of ZipDrives were? You could have like 3 pirated games on one of those bad boys. Sam and Max, Leisure Suit Larry, and Dark Forces. With a note file with the serial numbers for the game and or a Crack.exe

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[-]

AllTheDaddy@reddit

Obviously you're too young for this game. Cassettes.

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[-]

Past-Isopod-138@reddit

Mine was floppy at first then I got hard.

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[-]

KFRKY1982@reddit

all

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[-]

slothscanswim@reddit

Yes.

Reply

[-]

Uncle_polo@reddit

Hard disks. But we had floppy in our old green screen apples in elementary school that were hand me downs from the high school. Voyage of the Mimi on floppy disk. But the teachers would still say "don't forget to make your 'floppy copy' " when we were word processing a story. Floppy copy lives rent free forever.

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[-]

kcg333@reddit

yes.

Reply

[-]

Sauced_Boss_@reddit

Floppy discs.

Reply

[-]

TamatoaZ03h1ny@reddit

Yes

Reply

[-]

Country_Gravy420@reddit

I wish I had a 8 inch floppy.

Reply

[-]

Jaguar-spotted-horse@reddit

Cassette tapes.

Reply

[-]

snow-haywire@reddit

Yes

Reply

[-]

Razalghul2160@reddit

My dicks always been hard… oh sorry misread the post

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[-]

dvoecks@reddit

Missed the 8-inchers, but definitely remember 5.25s and single sided 3.5s, before the double sided ones. Had a HS teacher whose "bathroom pass" was an 8" floppy. We also had a Commodore 64 with a drive that used audio tapes for a minute, but I was too young to get any real use of it.

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[-]

Johnnyfever13@reddit

Hard disks

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[-]

sjdagreat1984@reddit

both lol

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[-]

I_make_switch_a_roos@reddit

cassettes for my Amstrad 464

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[-]

TheWriteStuff1966@reddit

Yes

Reply

[-]

RaphaelSolo@reddit

>Did you grow up with hard disks or floppy disks? Yes

Reply

[-]

Reideo@reddit

Yes

Reply

[-]

silverfang789@reddit

I remember using both in junior high and high school (early to mid-90s).

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[-]

33TLWD@reddit

https://preview.redd.it/vm9trk01lfkc1.jpeg?width=1356&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4467b821c9867725b88fd2fcb528fd6daef36877 I see your floppy and raise you a Zip disk

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[-]

something-strange999@reddit

Yes to all

Reply

[-]

Straight-Scholar9588@reddit

Floppy disks. Thanks C64 and the apple II in school.

Reply

[-]

Benjamin_Tucker3308@reddit

Trs-80 cassettes

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[-]

boobake@reddit

I used all 3 throughout my childhood.

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[-]

MetaVulture@reddit

Started with the 5.25 and the 3.5. My first machine was the same age as myself because poor. IBM XT with a 286 add on and 640k of memory. Ended up installing windows 3.0 in real mode on it.

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[-]

thelanai@reddit

All of them

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[-]

CrowsRidge514@reddit

Floppy to hard baby My bad had to do it…

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[-]

jackparadise1@reddit

I have used them all at some point including cassette tapes as well.

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[-]

AllTheStars07@reddit

Both but mainly the hard disks.

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po_ta_toes_80@reddit

All 3, and also made way too many greeting cards and banners with print shop. Anyone else? We thought it was the ultimate solution to never have to buy a card again. Those stupid banners would print for 30 mins it felt like. https://preview.redd.it/vq594om3kfkc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4840d20b775fe1c43da921f773bc05cf6be37c28

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BeardedPuffin@reddit

Yes. And they’re all floppy disks. A hard disk is a hard drive.

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[-]

Vargen_HK@reddit

I remember copying various files off of my Uktima VI 5.25” floppies onto one 3.5” disk. That way if I had the correct disks in each drive I could play with a minimum of disk swapping. I actually got my start on Tandy Color Computer cartridges, but most of what I did with that machine was with cassette tape, or 5.25” floppies on an external drive that plugged into the cartridge slot.

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Sinborn@reddit

My first computer experiences were with apples in grade school. They often had 2 5.25" drives stacked on top. I only saw the larger floppy disks when I dug through a hoard of old electronics at my job.

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jungle4john@reddit

All of these and zip disks.

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megacide84@reddit

My early childhood was during the 5.25" floppy disc era.

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Ryderrunner@reddit

Yes

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javatimes@reddit

I only vaguely remember the giant sized floppies. I still have a zipdisk in my possession from 2000ish when I was staff on a college newspaper. Technically it’s their property. I just keep it because I don’t know what else to do with it.

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garash@reddit

DAT cassettes on a C64

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surfingbiscuits@reddit

Babies. We kept data on cuneiform tablets inside sealed bullae. No one even knew what a disk was until Babylon took over.

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mybffjones@reddit

All of them?

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SaintCholo@reddit

All of the above

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DifferentShip4293@reddit

I’m on the older side, born in ‘77, so…both?

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theneverendingsorry@reddit

I got bigger, the disks got smaller 🥺 All my college papers are on a Zip disk I can’t open right now without substantial effort.

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Nothing_new_to_share@reddit

I remember wondering how in the world I would ever fill an entire Zip disk.

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Iamoldsowhat@reddit

yes yes and yes. middle school was big black ones by high school we transitioned to the ones on the right. my kids now call them “old school usb’s” 🤣

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mfhandy5319@reddit

How many?

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ircsmith@reddit

Yes.

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haeda@reddit

I started with a cassette for memory. It was a wild time.

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Preemptively_Extinct@reddit

Didn't have disc s when I got my first computer. Used a cassette recorder to save stuff.

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knivesofsmoothness@reddit

Yes.

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Redditor-247@reddit

Anyone remember zip drives in the 90s?

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tomqvaxy@reddit

ALL FLOPPY. ALL HAIL THE 5”!

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EricaOdd@reddit

... I grew up with punch cards...

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Uncle-Negev@reddit

I started computing with windows 98 because I HAD to play Half Life.

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InevitableUsual4126@reddit

Both

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Zane42v2@reddit

My first computer used casettes. My 2nd and 3rd uses 5.25" floppys. I installed a 3.5 "High density" in my 3rd computer and it was so, so sweet. At least until I got a 2400 baud modem with v.42bis compression and downloaded at a earth shattering 270 Bps.

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PolarBlueberry@reddit

My first computer was a Gold Star duel 5.25 Floppy Drive with a boot disc and no hard drive. My dad bought it off of QVC around 1990. We had Sid Myer’s Pirates and I used to play that game for hours on end, sailing endlessly around the Caribbean.

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radmadicaled@reddit

#yes

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cherrylpk@reddit

Yea

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NachiseThrowaway@reddit

Floppy at first, hard as I got older. Now it’s just a flash.

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Sirtriplenipple@reddit

The orange and blue ones. I saw like 2 of those big ones in my lifetime I think.

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Flat_Ad1384@reddit

When I was a kid I asked an adult what the difference between floppy disks and hard disks were and got an answer along the lines of “the information from a floppy disk goes into the computer floppy and with a hard disk it goes in hard”. Maybe they just needed computer Viagra 🤷

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Final-Onion-2068@reddit

Why not both 3.5 and 5.25 floppy discs

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macrocosm93@reddit

We had those big black ones in elementary school, for like Oregon Trail IIRC

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nutstuart@reddit

Yes

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Lurki_Turki@reddit

All of them, but they were all called floppies back then.

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Vegetable-Lie-6499@reddit

I used the big one on ibm mechanical equipment called a MICR Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. The most complicated mechanical device IBM has ver devised lol 😂

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pinellas_gal@reddit

All 3. Used big fatty zip discs in my early college years!

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ddubs41@reddit

Yes

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gwhh@reddit

Both.

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Photosafarian@reddit

Yes

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rojasdracul@reddit

Both.

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tangcameo@reddit

These and cassettes

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Western-Dig-6843@reddit

So we never had a computer at home that used those 5.25s, *but* I have memories of using them in the computer class at my elementary school when I was in K-2nd. Our first home computer used the 3.5s.

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fender0327@reddit

They were all floppy disks.

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Uzzaw21@reddit

Hey look, they 3D printed the "save" icon, 😆

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NeedsMoreTuba@reddit

Don't copy that floppy!

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Outrageous-Pause6317@reddit

I had the 51/4” floppy disks in my day. 70s and 80s.

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Stonk_Lord86@reddit

Both. Xennial life.

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BKKJB57@reddit

Both

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badmalky@reddit

Yes

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Old_Car_2702@reddit

5.25 and 3.5

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BOSS_OF_THE_INTERNET@reddit

Tapes

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PoopsMcCrack@reddit

First it was floppy then it got hard, then I got old

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WishieWashie12@reddit

You are forgetting about the cassette drive.

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Aselleus@reddit

I played Oregon Trail on a 5.25" floppy disk like god intended

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Embarrassed_Wall_963@reddit

Let's just say we played Oregon Trail in school

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mikehamm45@reddit

I’ve remembered using all of the above

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Prossdog@reddit

Now that I’m over 40 I’ve learned a new meaning for a 3 1/2 inch floppy…

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Icy-Garbage-2569@reddit

Both

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gotkube@reddit

First exposure: 5.25” First owned: 3.5” First kiss: about 6” 😏

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larryb78@reddit

Growing up with a commodore 128 I knew 5.25” disks as floppies so when my dad built a PC and told me it had a hard drive I assumed the 3.5” disks I suddenly saw were what he was talking about just because they weren’t floppy

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Master_Ad_7019@reddit

Good ti.es 😆

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Ser_Erdrick@reddit

Now what ever you do, Don't Copy That Floppy

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JackalRampant@reddit

Hey. It's drive A and drive B! I never see those guys anymore. Good times trying to animate with Fantavision.

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MrsEmilyN@reddit

Both?

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ThinkFree@reddit

My earliest memories of using a computer was using 5.25 floppies to run DOS and play Test Drive in the late 1980s.

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ArdenElle24@reddit

Yes.

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QuizzicalWombat@reddit

All of them, I remember hard disks the most at home but floppy’s at school

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SpendPsychological30@reddit

None of these are hard disks. A hard disk is something completely different, these are ALL floppy disks.

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dabudtenda@reddit

2 outa three, though I might have been around for the first I don't know dates well. My parents kept me doped up on Benadryl. Most of my childhood is a blur, I get flashes, they're not pretty

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Pinkfoodstamp@reddit

I used the right two, and then zip discs 😁

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MDH2881@reddit

I remember the ones in the center and right. I remember the small disks could hold 1.44 MBs.

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Due-Set5398@reddit

They were still using the middle ones in Apple IIe models in computer labs until 1995 or so. The 3.5 floppy was still a thing in the early 2000s. Remember Zip drives?

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Ok-Selection9508@reddit

Eh they are all floppy. Even the hard disks just do the pencil trick to see them bend.

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sfxer001@reddit

Both.

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Nrthstar@reddit

Yes

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carnivalbill@reddit

Yes

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jonathantg35@reddit

Never saw the first one but the smaller two I remember and used

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spsanderson@reddit

Floppy

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ApproachingShore@reddit

I remember seeing the occasional big-ass floppy disc when I was a very young kid. By the time I was a young teenager it was 3.5 inch floppys. I still remember using like six of them to install DOOM 2.

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ramonarart@reddit

i still make those at my job for airplanes 😆 Sometimes hundreds 😭😭😭😭 i hate them they break so easily!

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Strategory@reddit

All floppy because the innards are floppy

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CargoMansharks@reddit

It started out hard but now that I'm older it's pretty floppy, oh wait you said "disks". My bad.

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Lol, glad I'm not the only Xennial dealing with this

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TBoneBaggetteBaggins@reddit

What is wrong with your dick?

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GarpRules@reddit

I grew up with books as our main data storage devices.

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Sens9@reddit

I’m pretty sure I have some college papers on the 3.5” floating around my house somewhere, even though I don’t have a PC to put them in anymore

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TaiDavis@reddit

Yes

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Easy_Independent_313@reddit

Both

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Shinami01@reddit

Yes.

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fumbler00ski@reddit

When I was growing up sometimes it was hard, sometimes it was floppy. Impossible to predict.

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infinestyle@reddit

Both

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BitCurious8598@reddit

Orange 🍊 and blue 💙

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WokkitUp@reddit

Yes, and yes. And Zip Disks too.

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Bromanzier_03@reddit

Yes. 3.5” to be precise I saw and used the larger 5” ones but barely. My uncle had some old games on the larger one.

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cseyferth@reddit

Yes

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Danny-Wah@reddit

I grew up with floppy disks. The floppy kind and the hard kind. I am younger than that big mama one though.

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Southknight46@reddit

Yes, I might still have a few. The 1st desktop I had used floppy disk

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LuhkeeLeMay@reddit

Ummm, we used to use punch cards to program in grade school. My first home computer, the Apple IIGS, used cassette tapes.

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EntertainmentRare697@reddit

All of the above.

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JackKovack@reddit

I had the 2nd two. The big one is reserved for nuclear silo’s.

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Tangochief@reddit

Yes

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zeethreepeeo@reddit

Yes

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Ninjamohawk@reddit

I grew up with all these kinds of floppies. And later, zip disks

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InspectorEE@reddit

5.25 floppy when I was younger. And then we got a new computer and I was fucking blown away that the 3.5 inch floppies had like 1 mb storage

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runhomejack1399@reddit

All.

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barfly2780@reddit

B drive

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-Nyarlabrotep-@reddit

\*eyetwitch\* Those are all floppies, one just has a hard shell around the floppy part. Hard disk drives are either mounted into the computer or separate accessory devices connected via a cable (external hard drive). I used all those at various points, also tape storage from simple cassettes on a Radio Shack TRS-80 to fancier Seagate tape drives on Macs, PCs, and SGI workstations. I bet there are still boxes of deteriorated floppies somewhere in my parents' attic.

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poopy_poophead@reddit

Tapes. I had a trs80 color 2 when I was six. We had tapes.

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Bandando@reddit

In 5th grade, they gave each of us a floppy of all the papers we had written for class that year, so we could access them forever and ever! 😂

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Extreme-Guitar-9274@reddit

I remember them all

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Moliza3891@reddit

All of them I think. In elementary school we had the computers that were equipped with two drives. Slot A was for the startup and then Slot B was for running the system further on. Those things were loud too!

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clusterfuck2022@reddit

You could buy single or double-sided (more expensive) 5.25 disks. The only difference was the square "write" notch cut out on the disk. With a paIr of scissors you could make all your disks double sided by just cutting the noth manually on the opposite side of the disk.

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SpectralEntity@reddit

Yes. To all. Which those are all floppy discs btw. Hard discs were the mechanical drives inside the PC.

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PurplishPlatypus@reddit

I played dig dug and pac man on my Aunt's computer using the big floppies. Then in the mod 90s I played games with the hard disks on our own computer

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Moliza3891@reddit

Both. I want to say that it was floppy from kindergarten through fourth grade for me (just to run the computer, no saving). Then the hard disks from middle school though high school.

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brinazee@reddit

Knew of but never used 8" floppies. Had lots of 5.25" ones and boxes upon boxes of 3.5".

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horror-@reddit

5.25 GANG represent.

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LoverboyQQ@reddit

I’ve still got the disk drive for the larger floppy disk. Uses like a 50 something pin connector

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StubbornKindOfFellow@reddit

I remember all three being used at school. But at home, we didn't get a computer until like 1997 or 1998, so I primarily used the smallest one until portable USB drives became a thing.

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OptimusShredder@reddit

I grew up with all. Had a bunch of 3.5 inch ones and thought it was cool cause it could hold “tons” of games and nes roms. Lol

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DOC472016@reddit

When I was younger I always had a hard disk, but now it’s mainly floppy 😞

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HerbertoPhoto@reddit

Yes.

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junkmail0178@reddit

I used the 3.5 “hard shell” floppy disks well into the early aughts.

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Cutthechitchata-hole@reddit

All of them

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BigConstruction4247@reddit

I had a C64 with a 5.25 drive, so the one in the middle. A hard disk is something else. All three of the pictures discs are floppy discs.

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TankPC@reddit

Damn been a hot minute since I've seen a 10" floppy. Them damn things were indestructible

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41whitemale@reddit

All of the above.

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The_Urban_Genitalry@reddit

Cassette tapes first in the very early 1980s, then the floppy disks later.

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ennuiismymiddlename@reddit

There’s pills now for floppy disks.

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ButIAmYourDaughter@reddit

Those are all floppy disks, and since they’ve all been around since the 80s or before, Xennials grew up with them all.

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Best_Air_4138@reddit

They’re all floppies, but yes I remember my dad install doom in ms-dos from all floppies.

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VioletVenable@reddit

I grew up with the 5.25”s and the 3.5”s. I think the first software I installed from a CD-ROM was Encarta ‘95.

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Velocitor1729@reddit

Floppy disks were for the rich kids. We had data cassette tapes.

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KevinsSmellyDogRuby@reddit

Yes.

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BattleSpecial242@reddit

Middle disk

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Diverswelcome@reddit

Both then cd rom

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AnthrallicA@reddit

Why no love for the iOmega zip disks? 😂 I had to pay something like $75 for one back in 1998 to use for storing my digital art projects in high school.

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garrando@reddit

I remember installing windows 95 with like 20+ floppys. Worth it

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drrmimi@reddit

All of them

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Echterspieler@reddit

one time in tech school I asked the teacher if they had any more floppy disks, but it came out "floppy dicks" 🤣

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Crazydiamond450@reddit

The older i get the floppier the disk

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Atillion@reddit

Yes. (BTW, all of those are floppy disks.. hard disks are internal hard drives)

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SplitFingerSkadoosh@reddit

I had a Radio Shack TRS-80 with a cassette drive before my big upgrade to an IBM PS/2 with DUAL 5.25 + 3.5 drives.

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Traditional-Memory62@reddit

The pink ranger made my floppy disk hard, is that what you mean?

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cropguru357@reddit

Never had the 8”. Plenty of 5.25 and 3.5… then there were the Zip disks!

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aiolyfe@reddit

The 5.25" ones are the earliest for me.

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carlitospig@reddit

All of the above. I’m Xinniel. 😉

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heyitscory@reddit

The 5" and 7" floppies were good for cutting into wedges and putting them over glasses for looking at the sun. Doesn't work on 3.5"

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thagor5@reddit

I started with the largest one. Heck. I started with a cassette tape

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armhat@reddit

Depends on what my teacher wore to class that day…

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Budgiejen@reddit

Print shop was on the 5.25? Whatever the big ones were In college we were using the smaller ones.

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CommunicationKey3018@reddit

Yes

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ReiperXHC@reddit

A hard disc to s your internal storage. The discs themselves are hard. Hence HDD for Hard Disc Drive.

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EmporioS@reddit

You were able to fold the firsts Floppy disks. Later on we had the Hard disk ones.

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LMurch13@reddit

5 1/4, C64. So many fond memories. Loved that period in time.

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sabby55@reddit

Both

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Guacisextra__@reddit

Those are all floppy disks. And I grew up with all three of them. I do remember when we got our first computer with a hard drive. That was life changing.

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llamakins2014@reddit

Both!

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gertrudeblythe@reddit

All of these! We had a computer since 1980.

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Yankee_Jane@reddit

https://preview.redd.it/wolgkz9kxekc1.jpeg?width=1462&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bd48b7266f9d0cdba09d2f17412878d5c1fd59d

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Witty-Common-1210@reddit

Yes

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redditisahive2023@reddit

First computer had two 5.25” floppy drives—no hard drive. DOS was loaded off a floppy

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toomuchisjustenough@reddit

Cassette tapes

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EmporioS@reddit

Floppy. I remember they will fold so easily

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bangbangracer@reddit

Well, all of them were called floppy disks, and a hard disk is the actual term for a hard drive.

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PollyDarton_me@reddit

Both

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FootballRecent931@reddit

Yes.

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HandCarvedRabbits@reddit

All of the above. Started when my dad bought an Apple II+ in 1983

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RotrickP@reddit

A whole new generation of kids isn’t getting to make “floppy” jokes

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Lyonors@reddit

None of these are hard disks, but I used all at one point or another.

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SmallSaltyCoyotes@reddit

Yes

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solstargazer@reddit

The save button!

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hangryvegan@reddit

Yes.

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Eladiun@reddit

I rock a 3 1/4 hard

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Taupenbeige@reddit

Had all three in my home

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BIGepidural@reddit

Both. Early school was floppy. High school was hard.

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Late-Arrival-8669@reddit

floppy disks, then \~ decade later came the 3 1/2 disks.

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Apprehensive-Try-776@reddit

![gif](giphy|H2zyL2u70n9wQ)

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ScotchRick@reddit

Those are all floppy disks. 5 1/4 was the standard when I was introduced to computers as a kid. Oregon Trail, Baby!

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FaithlessnessOwn3077@reddit

Blue floppies for me.

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deowolf@reddit

Hey, the save icon. Neat.

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tavikravenfrost@reddit

All of these.

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IHeartsFarts@reddit

Both

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henryfarts@reddit

Played Oregon Trail and Number Crunchers on the large floppy, but I never snitched on Carmen Santiago on the "hard drives"

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villagust@reddit

Played Oregon Trail on floppy disks in elementary school. Played Where In (whatever) Is Carmen Sandiego? on hard disks in middle school.

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LugianLithos@reddit

Uhhuhuuuhuuh you said floppy and hard. ![gif](giphy|DivGMoOlQIjCfkNqAp|downsized)

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ddayam@reddit

I had all three. Born in 1982.

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Parking_Train8423@reddit

My first computer was a typewriter

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Deskbreaker@reddit

Both

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AGriffon@reddit

Ha! My parents office computers for their business still used tapes!!!

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WhiskeyBadger_@reddit

Yes

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andio76@reddit

Gen X here" ![gif](giphy|AGW3VO7F5DLbARBuwi|downsized)

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eljuarez99@reddit

At school it was hard disks,usb& zip dtives I loved loved loved usb s replacing hard disks

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idontknowmanwhat@reddit

🤓 *actually*…

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BJNT92281@reddit

Both. From 87 to 05 kindergarten to undergraduate. Didn’t even know they’d switch to thumb drives until 08. 😄

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snowmaker417@reddit

All of these things are familiar to me

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King-of-Plebss@reddit

![gif](giphy|3o7aCRloybJlXpNjSU|downsized)

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heresmytwopence@reddit

I like your username! https://i.redd.it/n3jlb76gqekc1.gif

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Thanks! One pleasant surprise in this amazing Xennial sub is lots of fans recognizing my username. Great gif!

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ganoveces@reddit

all of em. then zip disk for a minute. then usb flash drives happened.

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AccidentalGK@reddit

I’ve actually used 8” floppies. My middle school had a bank of Wang word processors despite the PC and word processing software being a thing at the time.

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starwestsky@reddit

Floppy Commodore 64 starting out and by middle school Keyboarding class hard disc

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Adventurer_By_Trade@reddit

The first one I used regularly was a 1.2MB floppy. My grandma bought a Commodore 64 at a garage sale in the 90s, and we would use it to play games when we visited, but we never owned anything with an older floppy like that until we had it as a secondhand novelty.

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Ed_geins_nephew@reddit

Personally I started in the middle now I'm here

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ultimateman55@reddit

It used to get hard but now it's floppy.

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faintly_nebulous@reddit

Both

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cramber-flarmp@reddit

Kings Quest took 7 of the middle type. Please insert next disc.

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frostedsun8282@reddit

Both

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mandarin80@reddit

Cassettes

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superschaap81@reddit

I don't recall the super large ones, but the orange and the "Zip Disks" as we used to call them, for sure.

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The_Grinning_Bastard@reddit

The amount of disk changing you had to do to play a single adventure game.

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balthazar_blue@reddit

I never used an 8" floppy, though I think my high school's typesetter used them. In elementary school we started with Apple II's using 5.25" floppy drives. At some point in the late '80s we switched over to Apple II's with a 5.25" and a 3.5", and by mid '90s I think it was all Macs. There were IBMs in the "business" classroom, and I think they had 3.5" drives as well. My family's first real computer was a Tandy 1000 with both a 3.5" and a 5.25" drive. By college I had a slew of 3.5" floppies for different classes, as well as Zip disks when floppies didn't have enough space.

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hokie47@reddit

All, but I had a computer when I was 3. I placed the Police man in the trashcan because I didn't like him and it crashed the computer. Computers back then had no safeguards.

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rantingpacifist@reddit

We had all of those in school

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Geekboxing@reddit

The 8" disks had fallen out of use by the time we got our first Packard Bell home PC in \~1989. I do remember installing my first 3.5" drive, though!

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Gouper07@reddit

Well, usually it was floppy, occasionally it got hard...more frequently as I entered my mid teens..

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[-]

Gouper07@reddit

Ooops, didn't read that word correctly 😬😬😬

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BigTomAbides@reddit

Yeah all. Tron like a motherfucker. Fucking wild the leaps in tech.

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Different_Support_36@reddit

Is this a trick question? This is a Xennial sub. The answer is yes.

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GargantuanCake@reddit

Yes.

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ChromeDestiny@reddit

Both, and my dad had a computer cassette drive and a few tapes too and the programs for my parents' Tandy Trash 80 were on big carts that kind of looked like 8-track tapes.

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SisGMichael@reddit

Yes

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EliteCheddarCommando@reddit

Yes

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ChaseTheRedDot@reddit

No - he is correct. Apple called the 3.5 inch discs hard disks.

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mvpilot172@reddit

Oregon Trail on a 5.25” floppy!

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Geochic03@reddit

All 3. I still used the hard shelled ones when I started college and needed to save work I did at the computer lab.

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KThxBai_180@reddit

All of these

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sashm0@reddit

Yes. 1984

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3pointone74@reddit

All of ‘em! I was born in ‘79!

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Liathano_Fire@reddit

Both.

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Significant_Dog412@reddit

Floppy disks for the Amiga. Don't miss having to swap them during gameplay, four disks for Mortal Kombat 2.

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DamarsLastKanar@reddit

I remember when floppies were five inches. Those were the days. Now you're lucky to see a three inch floppy.

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Glittering-Most-9535@reddit

Seems a rather personal question.

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ChalkDstTorture@reddit (OP)

Sorry man. Shouldn't have gone there

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TheRealBrewballs@reddit

Predominantly 3.5 but used the larger as well.

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Bnmko_007@reddit

3.5’s and Zip drives

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mperiolat@reddit

Floppy, Apple IIe

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sirellery@reddit

I never used the biggest floppy disks, but as a child in elementary school, I did use the middle sized before the 3.5in floppy

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CorgiMonsoon@reddit

Floppy at our school computer lab, but from our first family PC at home it was only the 3.5” hard ones

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PlaneLocksmith6714@reddit

Both

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woolly_mammoth_hat@reddit

Both. Installed Windows 3.1 using like 12 3.5” disks.

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panthersunshine@reddit

Yes

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let_them_eat_spam@reddit

Those are all floppy disks in the picture…. But I grew up with the 5 and then the 3.5

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flashy_dragon_@reddit

Yes.

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realauthormattjanak@reddit

Both

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---oO-IvI-Oo---@reddit

Same

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FreezingRobot@reddit

Not only did I grow up with floppy disks, I had stuff on the huge 5.25" ones.

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