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A floppy disk, diskette, or floppy diskette is a type of disk storage made from a thin, flexible disk coated with a magnetic storage medium. It is enclosed in a square or nearly square plastic shell lined with fabric to help remove dust from the spinning disk. Floppy disks store digital data, which can be read or written when inserted into a floppy disk drive (FDD) connected to or built into a computer or other device. The three most popular formats of floppy disks (and their drives) are the 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch versions.
The first floppy disks, invented and made by IBM in 1971, had a disk diameter of 8 inches (200 mm). Subsequently, the 5¼-inch (130 mm) and then the 3½-inch (90 mm) became a ubiquitous form of data storage and data transfer into the first years of the 21st century. By the end of the 1980s, 5¼-inch (130 mm) disks had been superseded by 3½-inch (90 mm) disks. During this time, PCs frequently came equipped with drives of both sizes. By the mid-1990s, 5¼-inch drives had virtually disappeared, the 3½-inch disk became the dominant format. The advantages of the 3½-inch (90 mm) disk were its higher capacity, smaller physical size, and its rigid case which provided better protection from dirt and other environmental risks.
Floppy disks were so common in late 20th-century culture that many electronic and software programs continue to use save icons that look like floppy disks well into the 21st century, as a form of skeuomorphic design. While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy industrial computer equipment, they have been superseded by data storage methods with much greater data storage capacity and data transfer speed, such as USB flash drives, memory cards, optical discs, and storage available through local computer networks and cloud storage.

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