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

Let’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.

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

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To 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.

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In 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.

To 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.

(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.)  

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

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

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

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

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In 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.

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

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

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

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

It 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.

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The 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.

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

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In 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.

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

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

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

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After 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.

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

Windows 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.

Windows 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.

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

So, what if Windows 7 shipped on floppy disks?

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Using 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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After 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.

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