Information on Superdisk Back Up

SuperDisk backup disks are the same size as traditional 3.5-inch floppy disks.

SuperDisk is a data storage format developed in the mid-1990s. It was released as competition for Iomega's Zip disks. The SuperDisk format has since become obsolete and as of 2010 no manufacturers are developing new products for the format.

History

In the early 1990s, demands were increasing for storage disk space on computers. To meet this demand, the storage products division of 3M (later rechristened Imation) took over development of SuperDisk technology from Iomega. Imation refined the storage technology and later licensed it to a variety of manufacturers under the SuperDisk and LS-120 names.

Function

SuperDisk was an example of what has since been called floptical technology. Floptical technology combined traditional magnetic tape storage with laser heads. The smaller head size of a laser meant that more data could be written on a given area of tape. The storage format was built around traditional 3.5-inch floppy disk technology and was backward-compatible, which meant SuperDisk drives could also read and write on older traditional 3.5-inch floppy disks. Original SuperDisk diskettes could hold 120MB worth of data; 240MB versions were developed later.

Significance

SuperDisk suffered from poor sales and consumer uptake due primarily to the existence of Iomega's Zip disk technology. Zip disks, which could store 100MB of data, had already been on the market for three years when SuperDisk was released. SuperDisk drives could not read older 800k and 400k Macintosh disks, which meant few Macintosh users adopted SuperDisk. Microsoft's Windows XP did not offer native support for SuperDisk, which further hindered its acceptance as a mainstream storage medium.

References

• Serving History: SuperDisk
• KarbosGuide: Other Drives