A Ukrainian electronics engineer and software developer just installed a 3.5-inch floppy drive in their Tesla, and they were even able to play a single MP3 file off the ancient storage medium. Oleg Kutkov posted a video on X (expand the tweet below) showing the old drive plugged into the USB port in the glove compartment of the electric vehicle via a USB to FDD converter. They then played Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up, which was stored on the 1.44 MB diskette. It took some time for the song to load, and you can hear the drive moving around the magnetic head to read the contents, but it works.

Sony introduced the 3.5-inch floppy in 1981, with the removable storage hitting its peak in popularity in the 1990s. However, the arrival of rewritable CDs with 486 times more data storage than the 1.44 MB diskette, and USB flash drives in the 2000s meant the storage system was soon relegated to running on legacy machines and hardware. Today, the technology is already 45 years old, and many of the new generation would only recognize it as the “save” icon on many modern applications and not as an actual storage medium.

Article continues below

Even older systems have started finally phasing out the floppy disk. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) started phasing it out last year, alongside some of its computers that still used Windows 95, while the Japanese government has finally amended its laws that required the use of magnetic storage devices in 2024. We’re also seeing institutions finally upgrading from even older versions of this removable storage — San Francisco is spending $212 million to upgrade its metro trains and remove the 5.25-inch floppies installed on their systems by 2034, while the German Navy is looking to replace the 8-inch floppy drives used on its Brandenburg-class F123 frigates.

Unfortunately, there’s still one prominent holdout for the 3.5-inch floppy — the New Jersey State Prison. It does not allow prisoners to keep flash drives, but they’re entitled to 20 floppy disks. This means they’re limited to a total of less than 28.8 MB of digital space to handle their appeals and require a library computer to transfer the files their lawyers send them on USB drives to the allowed storage media.

While floppy disks are no longer a practical means of storing data, they’re still quite important for the retro community. Linux even received updated drivers last year to help keep the drives running for a few more years. Despite that, you can still buy new floppy disks at floppydisk.com, at least for a few more years.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.