![SuperDisk Mac - USB to IDE adapter](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/SuperDisk_Mac_-_USB_to_IDE_adapter.jpg)
The SuperDisk LS-120 is a high-speed, high-capacity alternative to the 90 mm (3.5 in), 1.44
MB floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
. The SuperDisk hardware was created by
3M's storage products group
Imation in 1997, with manufacturing chiefly by
Matsushita.
The SuperDisk had little success in North America; with
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...
,
Gateway and
Dell
Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies.
Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...
being three of only a few
OEM
An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...
s who supported it. It was more successful in Asia and Australia, where the second-generation SuperDisk LS-240 drive and disk was released. SuperDisk worldwide ceased manufacturing in 2003.
History
The design of the SuperDisk system came from an early 1990s project at
Iomega
Iomega (later LenovoEMC) produced external, portable, and networked data storage products. Established in the 1980s in Roy, Utah, United States, Iomega sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks, including the Zip drive floppy d ...
. It is one of the last examples of
floptical
Floptical refers to a type of floppy disk drive that combines magnetic and optical technologies to store data on media similar to standard -inch floppy disks. The name is a portmanteau of the words "floppy" and "optical". It refers specifically t ...
technology, where
laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...
s are used to guide a magnetic head which is much smaller than those used in traditional floppy disk drives. Iomega orphaned the project around the time they decided to release the
Zip drive
The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 ...
in 1994. The idea eventually ended up at 3M, where the concept was refined and the design was licensed to established floppy drive makers Matsushita and
Mitsubishi
The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries.
Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group historically descended from the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company which existed from 1870 ...
. Other companies involved in the development of SuperDisk include Compaq and OR Technology.
Matsushita continued development of the technology and released the LS-240. It has double the capacity of the LS-120 and the added feature of being able to
format regular floppy disks to 32 MB capacity.
However, this higher density comes at a price – the entire disk must be rewritten any time a change is made, much like early
CD-RW
CD-RW (Compact Disc-Rewritable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format introduced in 1997. A CD-RW compact disc (CD-RWs) can be written, read, erased, and re-written.
CD-RWs, as opposed to CDs, require ...
media.
A SuperDisk drive was used in two Panasonic
digital camera
A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile device ...
s, the PV-SD4090
and PV-SD5000,
which allowed them to use both SuperDisk (LS120) and 3.5" floppy disks as the
memory media.
Technical information
The SuperDisk's format was designed to supersede the floppy disk with its higher-capacity media that imitated the ubiquitous format with its own 120 MB (and later 240 MB) disk storage while the SuperDisk drive itself was backwards compatible with 1.44 MB and 720 KB floppy formats (
MFM). Superdisk drives read and write faster to these sorts of disks than conventional 1.44 MB or 720 KB floppy drives. The newer LS-240 drives also have the ability to read and write regular 1.44 MB floppies at much higher densities.
The true capacity of these "SD120MB" drives
is 120.375
MiB aka 126.22 MB (
FAT16B
File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by c ...
with logical geometry 963/8/32
CHS × 512 bytes). The "SD240MB" drives have a capacity of 229.25 MiB aka 240.39 MB (
FAT16B
File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by c ...
with logical geometry 262/32/56 CHS × 512 bytes). 1.44 MB HD floppies formatted to 32 MB as "FD32MB" (
FAT16B
File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by c ...
with logical geometry 1024/2/32 CHS × 512 bytes) in the LS-240 show a dummy
FAT12
File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by ...
file system (with logical geometries 160/2/9 or 80/2/18) when inserted into a normal floppy drive.
SuperDisk drives have been sold in
parallel port
In computing, a parallel port is a type of interface found on early computers (personal and otherwise) for connecting peripherals. The name refers to the way the data is sent; parallel ports send multiple bits of data at once ( parallel ...
,
USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...
,
ATAPI
ATA Packet Interface (ATAPI) is a protocol that has been added to Parallel ATA and Serial ATA so that a greater variety of devices can be connected to a computer than with the ATA command set alone. It carries SCSI commands and responses through ...
and
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...
variants. All drives can read and write 1.44 MB and 720
KiB
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
MFM floppies, as used on PCs,
Apple Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
es (High Density format only, see below), and many
workstation
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...
s. 2.88 MB floppy formats are not supported.
Imation also released a version of the SuperDisk with "Secured Encryption Technology", which uses
Blowfish
Tetraodontidae is a family of primarily marine and estuarine fish of the order Tetraodontiformes. The family includes many familiar species variously called pufferfish, puffers, balloonfish, blowfish, blowies, bubblefish, globefish, swellfis ...
with a 64-bit key to encrypt the contents.
File:Imation Super Disk LS-120.jpg, Imation Super Disk LS-120
File:PIC 0856 SuperDisk.JPG, SuperDisk Drive
File:Super Disk 120MB 9111.jpg, Super Disk 120MB
File:Super Disk 120MB 9129.jpg, Super Disk 120MB
Criticism and obsolescence
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
users found trouble making SuperDisk drives work with the
GCR 800 KB or 400 KB diskettes used by older Macintoshes. These disks could be used in a SuperDisk drive only if formatted to PC 720 KB MFM format. Note that almost no other USB floppy drives supported Mac GCR floppies.
The biggest hurdle standing in the way of success was that Iomega's
Zip drive
The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 ...
had been out for three years when SuperDisk had been released. Zip had enough popularity to leave the public mostly uninterested in SuperDisk, despite its superior design and its compatibility with the standard floppy disk.
By 2000, the entire removable magnetic disk category was finally obsoleted by the falling prices of
CD-R
CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital optical disc storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can be written once and read arbitrarily many times.
CD-R discs (CD-Rs) are readable by most CD readers manufactured prior to the in ...
and
CD-RW
CD-RW (Compact Disc-Rewritable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format introduced in 1997. A CD-RW compact disc (CD-RWs) can be written, read, erased, and re-written.
CD-RWs, as opposed to CDs, require ...
drives, and later on
solid-state
Solid state, or solid matter, is one of the four fundamental states of matter.
Solid state may also refer to:
Electronics
* Solid-state electronics, circuits built of solid materials
* Solid state ionics, study of ionic conductors and their use ...
(
USB flash drive
A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since firs ...
s or USB keydrives). Over the next few years, SuperDisk was quietly discontinued, even in areas where it was popular. Today, disks are very hard to find.
Under
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
, a USB SuperDisk drive will appear as a 3.5" floppy disk drive, receiving either the drive letter A: (if there is no floppy in the machine) or B: (if there already is one). This enables use by software that expects a floppy drive when 1.44 MB or 720 KB disks are inserted. 120 MB and 240 MB disks are also accessed via A: or B:.
Practicality
The USB models were quite popular for debugging and installing servers that did not have a CD drive available. They could both store massive numbers of drivers for installation purposes as well as be used to run live operating systems, such as
ReactOS
ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system for amd64/i686 personal computers intended to be binary-compatible with computer programs and device drivers made for Windows Server 2003 and later versions of Windows. ReactOS has been noted a ...
, which amounts to 150 MB.
See also
*
Caleb UHD144
*
Floptical
Floptical refers to a type of floppy disk drive that combines magnetic and optical technologies to store data on media similar to standard -inch floppy disks. The name is a portmanteau of the words "floppy" and "optical". It refers specifically t ...
*
Sony HiFD
The Sony HiFD (High capacity Floppy Disk) was a high-capacity floppy disk system developed by Sony and Fujifilm and introduced in late 1998. Development and sale of the drives was discontinued by early 2001.
Announced in October 1997, HiFD disks ...
*
IBM Extended Density Format
The IBM eXtended Density Format (XDF) is a way of superformatting standard high-density 3½-inch and 5¼-inch floppy disks to larger-than-standard capacities. It is supported natively by IBM's PC DOS versions 7 and 2000 and by OS/2 Warp 3 ...
, technically unrelated special format for traditional HD floppy controllers, also providing a mini file system containing a
README
In software development, a README file contains information about the other files in a directory or archive of computer software. A form of documentation, it is usually a simple plain text file called README, Read Me, READ.ME, README.TXT, R ...
file similar to the LS-240's FD32M format.
*
Zip drive
The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Superdisk
Floppy disk drives