Floptical

Floptical refers to a type of floppy disk drive that combines magnetic and optical technologies to store data on media similar to standard 3+1⁄2-inch floppy disks. The name is a portmanteau of the words "floppy" and "optical". It refers specifically to one brand of drive and disk system, but is also used more generically to refer to any system using similar techniques.

The original Floptical technology was announced in 1988 and introduced late in 1991 by Insite Peripherals, a venture funded company set up by Jim Adkisson, one of the key engineers behind the original 5+1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive development at Shugart Associates in 1976. The main shareholders were Maxell, Iomega and 3M. This original format normally held 21 MB of data, compared to the contemporary 3.5" floppy capacity of 720 kB or 1.44 MB.

Over the next several years, similar products were introduced by other companies with ever increasing capacity, eventually reaching 240 MB in some systems. All of these, along with competing systems like the Zip drive, were replaced by writable CD-ROMs in many roles, and later, by thumb drives which were simpler, smaller, and faster.