How Many Floppy Disks Would It Take To Equal 1 Gigabyte?

By greg shultz February 10, 2011, 8:27 AM PST

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How Many Floppy Disks Would It Take To Equal 1 Gigabyte?

Image: NVIDIA

ntThis gallery was originally published in February 2011.

ntIn this day and age, we all take it for granted that we can walk around with multi-gigabyte thumb drives in our pockets. However, it really wasn’t that long ago that we carried around floppy disks. Have you ever wondered how many floppy disks it would take to equal 1 Gigabyte? If you have, then you will enjoy this gallery of images that depicts stacks of different capacity floppy disks that add up to 1 Gigabyte.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

Image: NVIDIA

ntLet’s begin by taking a look at a stack of 100 5.25-inch floppy disks alongside a typical thumb drive. This stack of disks measures 6-inches tall.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntHere is a stack of 100 3.5-inch floppy disks alongside a typical thumb drive. This stack measures 13-inches tall.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntTo give you some perspective as we move forward, this image shows a 6-foot tall man standing in between two stacks of 100 floppy disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIn the late 70’s, the capacity of the typical 5.25-inch floppy disk was a mere 110 KB. These disks were common for the early word processing machines and early CP/M computers.

ntTo equal 1 Gigabyte, you would need 9,532 110 KB floppy disks. As you can see, this is quite an impressive stack next to our 6-foot tall perspective man.

nt(Keep in mind that rather than including fractions of a disk, I am rounding off to the ones place when counting the number of disks.)

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIn 1981, version 1.0 of both MS-DOS and PC-DOS supported single-sided 160 KB floppy disks.

ntTo equal 1 Gigabyte, you would need 6,553 160 KB floppy disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIn 1982, when DOS was upgraded to 1.1, the operating system provided support for double-sided 320KB floppy disks.

ntTo equal 1 Gigabyte, you would need 3,276 320KB floppy disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIn 1983, when DOS 2.0 came out, the operating system provided support for both single-sided 180 KB floppy disks and double-sided 360KB floppy disks.

ntTo equal 1 Gigabyte, you would need 5,825 180 KB floppy disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntWhile DOS 2.0 provided support for single-sided 180 KB floppy disks, the double-sided 360KB floppy disks were more popular.

ntTo equal 1 Gigabyte, you would need 2,912 360KB floppy disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntWhen the IBM PC/AT made its debut in 1984, high density 1.2 MB floppy disks were on their way to becoming the standard.

ntIt would take 853 1.2 MB floppy disks to equal 1 Gigabyte. As you can see, while still an impressive stack, 853 floppy disks no longer towers over our perspective man.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntThe 3.5-inch disk, while enclosed in a hard plastic case, still retained the name floppy. The first variety of 3.5-inch floppy disk came in a 720 KB capacity.

ntTo equal 1 Gigabyte, you would need 1,456 720 KB floppy disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIn the late 80’s, the 5.25-inch floppy disk was on its way out and in 1987 the 3.5-inch floppy disk had moved into the high density category with a capacity of 1.44 MB.

ntYou would need 711 1.44 MB floppy disks to equal 1 Gigabyte.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIn 1991, the extended density 2.88 MB floppy disk made it appearance, but unfortunately never stole the thunder from its predecessor.

ntAs you can see, it would take only 355 2.88 MB floppy disks to equal 1 Gigabyte.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntAfter looking at those huge stacks of floppy disks, having our perspective man standing next to a 1 Gigabyte thumb drive makes you really appreciate the fact that floppy disks are pretty much a thing of the past.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntAs you may know, in addition to coming on a CD, Windows 95 and 98 also were available on floppy disks.

ntWindows 95 came on 1.44 MB floppy disks as well as a special high density floppy disk format, called the Distribution Media Format (DMF), developed by Microsoft for the installation of their products. The DMF disks were formatted at 1.68 MB. Windows 98 only came on the DMF floppy disks.

ntWindows 95 came on 21 1.44 MB floppy disks and 13 1.68 MB DMF floppy disks and Windows 98 came on 38 1.68 MB DMF floppy disks.

ntJust for comparison, it is interesting to note that Windows 3.0 came on five 1.2 MB floppy disks.

ntSo, what if Windows 7 shipped on floppy disks?

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntUsing the Ultimate version for an example, the 32-Bit Windows 7 Ultimate DVD contains 2.34 GB of data while the 64-Bit Windows 7 Ultimate DVD contains 3.01 GB of data.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIf the 32-Bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate came on 1.2 MB 5.25 floppy disks, it would require 1,706 disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIf the 32-Bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate came on 1.44 MB 3.5 floppy disks, it would require 1,422 disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIf the 32-Bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate came on 1.68 MB 3.5 floppy disks, it would require 1,219 disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIf the 64-Bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate came on 1.2 MB 5.25 floppy disks, it would require 2,560 disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIf the 64-Bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate came on 1.44 MB 3.5 floppy disks, it would require 2,133 disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntIf the 64-Bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate came on 1.68 MB 3.5 floppy disks, it would require 1,828 disks.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

ntAfter looking at those huge stacks of floppy disks, having our perspective man standing next to a 3 Gigabyte DVD makes you really appreciate the fact that Windows doesn’t come on floppy disks anymore.

ntImage by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

By greg shultz

My first computer was a Kaypro 16 \"luggable\" running MS-DOS 2.11 which I obtained while studying computer science in 1986. After two years, I discovered that I had a knack for writing documentation and shifted my focus over to technical writing.

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