I was a kid in the 80s, and had a Commodore 64, with a floppy dirve. These were 5.25" (or “five and a quarter inch”) floppy discs… They were somewhat durable, you could write to both sides of the floppy, and they were (relative to tape drives) fast. Interesting note for those who werent around to experience these… the difference between a double sided disk, and a single sided disk, was a notch on the left side of the disk. You could double side a single sided disk with a hole punch.

When 3.5" disks came about, I thought they were amazing… However, I was also a broke ass kid, and didnt actually get a pc until the early 90s… By that time HDD storage was much cheaper, and cd roms were starting to make their way onto the scene. My personal preference for mass portable storage was never the CD, because I felt like the writing software was always finicky, the 10000000 types of discs were a pain to decipher, and because I loved the ease and durability of a now forgotten device… the iomega zip drive. (RIP) But the cd’s were much cheaper to produce, and iomega went the way of the dodo.

Sorry if I got off track, and danced around both sides of the timeline for the 3.5’ers. I figure you were aware of the 5.25s, and the storeage after it… please dont read that as being condescending. It just triggered old memories, and I thought I would share, and you might find it interesting! In my timeline of computing, the 3.5 was significant, but less so that the 5.25… this is because the 5.25s were something I needed to play every game, every time I wanted to play it. So I would use it everytime I played a game. Sometimes several times if the game spanned many discs… (for example, ultima 4 used two disks, and both sides of each disk. So if you entered an area it might ask you to insert the “dungeon disk, side b”, etc.) By the time I got a pc, the 3.5s were something you used to install a game to a HDD… so handling the disk was pretty much only at install.