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Floppy disk

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Unless I'm missing something, while the lead mentions this connector is used for floppy disk drives, there doesn't appear to be any discussion of the actual floppy disc connector (which looks similar, but has fewer pins and also uses a different power connector (at least for 3.5" drives)). If there is an article already for that connector, we should probably link to it from here as they look very similar. —Locke Cole • t • c 17:27, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See Floppy disk drive interface, also linked to from Shugart bus. The original ST-506 interface was derived from the floppy interface, but PATA isn't. There were quite a lot of interfaces with ribbon connectors around back then. --Zac67 (talk) 18:15, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So is the lead accurate that the connection was used for floppy drives (I've only ever seen the one you linked at floppy disk drive interface)? —Locke Cole • t • c 20:05, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The lede says "connection" not "connector." Apparently one can buy an IDE FDD which would make the lede correct. I believe the 3.5-inch FDDs use a 34 pin version of the type of connector, originally from 3M, that is used in 50 pins for some forms of PATA interface. I suggest there is no need for a discussion of the connector similarities in this article. Tom94022 (talk) 07:10, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. The lead talks about connecting floppy disk drives using PATA, which is/was the common thing for SuperDisk and Zip drive. --Zac67 07:41, 6 July 2025 (UTC)
OK, but the lead links to actual floppy disks, so either an explanation about why we're linking to that needs to be in the body somewhere (per summary style writing), or the link needs to be removed. —Locke Cole • t • c 14:06, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why? The lede also links to optical disc drives and tape drives some which also can connect thru PATA and it doesn't mention SSDs - if anything, we should add them. Tom94022 (talk) 15:57, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Optical disc drives used the connector discussed here. Floppy disk drives, to my knowledge, never did (and at any rate, this article never discusses them directly, but rather Superfloppy variants that never had the wide acceptance of what most people would consider a floppy disk). I never used a tape drive so I can't speak to that. I'm also not aware of any SSDs that utilized PATA (AFAIK they began as PCIEx initially, then SATA, before NVME and M.2 took over).
Just to be crystal clear here: if there's some reliable sources that discuss actual floppy disk drives using PATA (and the 40-pin connector described in this article) then let's add it. I can't possibly know everything.
Also, you keep using the term lede, just to be clear, Wikipedia does not have "lede" sections, we have lead sections (see WP:NOTALEDE for more on that and why the distinction is important, at least on this project). —Locke Cole • t • c 20:54, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Floppy disk article includes links to three drives that used the PATA connector, not every tape drive nor every hard disk drive nor every optical disk drive used the PATA interface so the treatment in the lede is consistent, correct and need not be changed. BTW if you Google "IDE Floppy" or "PATA Floppy" you might be surprised to find standard low capacity 3.5-inch versions advertised, I was, and maybe they may not be real but it could be that someone actually did them, but that really doesn't matter, does it, given the three real products listed in the FD article. There is also the ZIP drive which may or may not be considered a floppy disk drive. BTW, I think the dictionary definition of lede fits and I don't think the editors of Wikipedia can deprecate English language used in a talk page. Tom94022 (talk) 05:57, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Re: PATA SSD - amazon /Crucial-BX500-1TB-2-5-SATA3/dp/B07YD579WM/ref=asc_df_B07YD579WM?mcid=4e6b86bbf74f327d885d29ecbf26b2bd&tag=googleshopdsk-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=712357308389&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10343781025867018869&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9070582&hvtargid=pla-840273997424&gad_source=1&th=1
I remember swapping a friend's 2.5" spinning rust (also PATA) for a similar SSD to give a very welcome improvement in response time when starting Windows 8 and its apps.  Stepho  talk  07:35, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Floppy disk article includes links to three drives that used the PATA connector Floppy disk only seems to refer to the Floppy disk drive interface (and "modern" external USB options, obviously). If you're talking about the variants (other than 8", 5¼" and 3½"), those were never really considered "floppy disks" (Zac67 noted that SuperDisk and Zip drive were two such examples; but again, never really considered "floppy disks"). BTW if you Google "IDE Floppy" or "PATA Floppy" you might be surprised to find standard low capacity 3.5-inch versions advertised I tried these queries in Google, and turned up products with IDE and PATA in their description, but upon closer inspection they utilized the Floppy disk drive interface.
Can you link to a specific product that shows a traditional floppy drive using PATA? Or quote and cite a Wikipedia page that says as much? —Locke Cole • t • c 16:09, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Most all if not all super floppies's had a PATA variant; some even acted as conventional FDDs reading and writing standard low-capacity media! And the lead sentence of that section is A number of attempts were made by various companies to introduce newer floppy-disk formats ... (both emphases added). Three models are lsited in and linked out of in the article linked in the lede. Opinion that these are somehow not floppies is pretty much irrelevant given the overwhelming evidence in Wikipedia and elsewhere that these products are considered floppies and they had PATA interfaces. Tom94022 (talk) 07:02, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The key word here is "attempt", these variants never achieved the wide acceptance of the two major floppy disk formats, and none of those used PATA. Your interpretation of the success or its relevance is interesting but irrelevant, we report what reliable sources report, and so far no sources are provided that support the statement that was made. —Locke Cole • t • c 08:15, 8 July 2025 (UTC) —Locke Cole • t • c 08:15, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Wide acceptance" is an opinion, not evidence and not true since it's hard to say that ZIP did not have wide acceptance, Even 25 years later the Iomega zip is unforgettable, and for that matter the evidence is that both Floptical and SuperDisk had "wide acceptance." Furthermore, Wikipedia and many RS's refer to all three as floppy disks and some of those linked [super] floppies read and wrote 3½-inch standard format so the lede is accurate in stating PATA served as a connection for some "floppy disk drives" just like it is accurate for some "hard disk drive"s, some "optical disk drive]]"s, etc. Tom94022 (talk) 20:20, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The WP:BURDEN is on you to prove that reliable sources refer to those other formats as "floppy disks" to the same extent as the 3.5" and 5.25" versions. Otherwise, we are misleading our readers in suggesting that PATA was utilized for those older drives (which, again, they do not appear to have been). —Locke Cole • t • c 02:06, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The claim is not the the ZIP disk and LS-120 disk media are called floppy disks. They weren't - although they were sometimes known as a super floppy. The claim is that the drive was called a floppy drive. Considering that the drive was connected by a PATA cable and could read/write a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk (in addition to the super floppy), then it fits the category of a PATA connected floppy drive. Surely you aren't saying that an LS-120 or ZIP disk could not read/write a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk. There weren't on practically every desktop like the standard floppy drive but they were certainly well-known in the industry. PATA tape drives were also a minority on desktops but well-known in the industry - although far, far less than SCSI tape drives. If you don't want to link super floppy in the lead then you should also remove tape drives.
@LC: "Your interpretation of the success or its relevance is interesting but irrelevant". Strange, that's exactly what I thought of your interpretation. But to keep to facts instead of name calling, let's try to agree on some definitions. Are you saying the ZIP drive and LS-120 drive could not read/write 1.44 MB floppies? Or that they did not have a PATA variant?  Stepho  talk  04:26, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:SYNTH, now go find a reliable source that calls an LS-120 a "floppy drive" in the context of discussing the PATA connector. Also, only certain Zip drives could read an old-style floppy disk, not all could. Finally, the original text of the article linked directly to floppy disk, which only barely mentions LS-120/Zip. The source Tom provided above only mentions "floppy" in the context of comparing Zip disks to the success of traditional floppy disks, it does NOT call Zip disks "floppy disks" (because of course they aren't floppy disks). Strange, that's exactly what I thought of your interpretation. Except policy is firmly behind me in the form of WP:BURDEN; it's on editors wishing to include challenged language to PROVE a statement they wish to make in an article, it's not on editors challenging text to DISPROVE a statement prior to removal. —Locke Cole • t • c 13:55, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does this end this nonsense: [1]? Porter is an RS and he lists 29 models of high capacity floppy disk drives some of which have PATA interfaces. Tom94022 (talk) 19:14, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a more contemporary source, one that doesn't rely on a dead tree edition? Surely if people called these "floppy disks" it should be easy to come up with something easily accessible and recent. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:16, 10 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Really, something wrong with dead trees as an RS for a dead interface on dead products. Frankly, contemporaneous discussion is likely more reliable than what is posted online and Jim Porter is a particularly reliable source given his 25+ years as a storage industry consultant and historian - The Porter archive at the Computer History Musuem consists of 140 linear feet of materials (about 111 record cartons) and comprises a vast amount of seminal storage industry information including company profiles, conference proceedings, courses, presentations, market profiles, as well as documents relating to his numerous consulting activities. The materials span in time from about 1959 to 2010; most of his publications on such devices refer to them as high capacity floppy disk drives. You asked that I now go find a reliable source ..., I did, can we end this? Tom94022 (talk) 19:25, 10 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So I'm just to take your good word on this? Since I have no way to verify your claim that the dead tree publication says the thing you claim it says? I'm struggling to believe that if these devices were so commonly referred to as "floppy disks" why you can't produce a source that's easily verifiable. Your first link contains a quote that kind of makes the point for me: The reports covered optical drives (CD, DVD), floppy disks, hard drives, and removable storage, like ZIP and Bernoulli disks and provide a long-term record of the global storage industry unlike any other. (wikilinks added) Note how the author (Dag Spicer) took care to separate out floppy disk[s] from removable storage, like ZIP and Bernoulli disks .... Clearly more recent sources don't conflate the two as you're suggesting. —Locke Cole • t • c 15:21, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Locke Cole: See Floppy disk: A floppy disk [...] is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure [...] That is exactly what SuperDisks, ZIPs and the like are. I suggest you take your discussion over there if you disagree with that description. This page here is about Parallel ATA, the interface. --Zac67 (talk) 12:10, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't disagree with that description because, as a summary (which is what a WP:LEAD is) of the Floppy disk article (which fully covers the standard floppy disks, 3.5", 5.25" and 8"), it is an accurate description. Just because it coincidentally overlaps with two other unrelated formats that are not called "floppy disks" doesn't change what the issue at this article is. As a reminder, the issue is that this article is claiming floppy disks (3.5", 5.25" and 8") used PATA. They did not. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:23, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually since some of the high capacity floppy disk drives read conventional 3½-inch Floppy Disks the inclusion is consistent with a link to the article on Floppy disk. Since you have no support for you opinion, your deletion from the article is inappropriate and I am reversing. To get out of the nonsense I am going to remove the word "devices" which will make the sentence even more accurate. Tom94022 (talk) 00:15, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Most people will interpret "floppy disk" as the standard 3.5-inch 1.44 MB type (and the compatible earlier versions). As far as I am aware, no drive that read only this type of floppy used PATA. However, the super floppy drives often read these 1.44 floppies as well as their own more advance 20+ MB media. So I propose that we do not use "floppy disk" but do use "super floppy" (with that link). This is both technically acurate and not misleading.
Secondly, even if you think the current version is wrong, please stop flip-flopping the article. Nobody is going to die if it is wrong for a few days. Wait until the discussion has formed a consensus. See WP:BRD and WP:EDITWAR for reasons why this type of editing is bad.  Stepho  talk  00:34, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion reset

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I probably should have looked into this earlier, but floppy drive/disk was added to the lead with these two edits by an IP that made no further edits. At the time these edits were made, Floppy drive was a redirect to Floppy disk, and this was the state of that article at the time the link was added. In that old revision, ZIP and SuperDisk were discussed as "standard floppy replacements", but never called "floppy disks" directly.

Prior to this, "floppy disk/drive" was not listed in the lead of this article. It did not appear to be discussed on the talk page (and if it was, the IP didn't participate, as their only two contributions are the previously linked diff). This means, even though it's been in place for fifteen years, it only has a WP:SILENTCONSENSUS which is the weakest form of consensus.

What concerns me about including this exact language is the ongoing risk of citogenesis, that is, Wikipedia itself being used as a "source" for the claim that PATA was ever used for traditional floppy disk drives. WP:BURDEN, part of WP:V (which is policy) is very explicit about what must happen in this situation: All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[a] the contribution.[b]

Notes

Notes

  1. ^ A source "directly supports" a given piece of material if the information is present explicitly in the source, so that using this source to support the material is not a violation of Wikipedia:No original research. The location of any citation—including whether one is present in the article at all—is unrelated to whether a source directly supports the material. For questions about where and how to place citations, see Wikipedia:Citing sources, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section § Citations, etc.
  2. ^ Once an editor has provided any source they believe, in good faith, to be sufficient, then any editor who later removes the material must articulate specific problems that would justify its exclusion from Wikipedia (e.g., why the source is unreliable; the source does not support the claim; undue emphasis; unencyclopedic content; etc.). If necessary, all editors are then expected to help achieve consensus, and any problems with the text or sourcing should be fixed before the material is added back.

The bolded portion (bolded in original) is the really important part here, as it's been repeatedly re-added without any inline citations to support the statement. I came to the talk page prior to making any edits to the article over a week ago seeking sources to support the statement (because I genuinely thought I was wrong, or at least was missing something obvious). WP:BRD and WP:EDITWAR are important, but given the lack of sourcing, I feel justified in removing unsourced content until such time as reliable sourcing is found that meets the standards expected by WP:V and WP:RS.

In so far as @Stepho-wrs:'s idea to utilize super floppy, I would not object to it as a compromise, however, I still believe it fails WP:DUE to include it in the lead and has serious WP:BALASP issues. PATA was widely used for hard drives and optical disc drives (and maybe tape drives, as again, I never really played with the hardware on those). PATA was never used for traditional floppy drives, and while successor formats may have utilized the connection, their lack of widespread adoption (to the same degree as optical drives and hard drives) would seem to indicate no need to mention them together in the lead of this article. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:27, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If need be, please discuss at Talk:Floppy disk. Practically any reasonable source I queried uses a definition for floppy disk that includes formats other than the once ubiquitous 3.5 and 5.25 in formats – [2], [3], [4]. To exclude formats like SuperDisk or ZIP is your very personal view and WP:OR. --Zac67 (talk) 20:39, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've gone ahead and corrected Floppy disk to match what the source says. FWIW, the language that said "three most popular" was a recent addition that was unsourced. As to your dictionary definition links... okay... it's a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. Dictionaries are not known for exhaustive descriptions of objects typically, that's why encyclopedias exist. —Locke Cole • t • c 22:02, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Zac67: BTW, it's not WP:NOR to note the absence of any sources supporting a statement. What is original research is the WP:SYNTH some here are using to take statements from separate sources and try to make them say what they clearly want them to say... We don't get to play 2+2 with our sources to claim they say 4. —Locke Cole • t • c 01:26, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Funny story, the very first source listed in the lead at floppy disk is
  • "Floppy Disk: History & Definition". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2009-03-12. Archived from the original on 16 June 2024. Retrieved 2024-06-16.
Which was updated just last month, and has this passage, They were made of flexible plastic coated with a magnetic material and enclosed in a hard square plastic case. The first floppy disks were 8 inches (20 cm) across. In the late 1970s, floppy disks became smaller, with the arrival of 5.25-inch (13.3-cm) models, and the final floppy disks, which debuted in the 1980s, were 3.5 inches (9 cm) in diameter. Notwithstanding MOS:TENSE concerns, this seems kind of definitive to me on the question of "what is a floppy disk?" that has caused so much gnashing of teeth in the discussion above. It's gonna take some pretty exceptional sources to sustain the claim that ZIP or SuperDisks were ever "floppy disks" to anyone beyond their small base of users (and even then, they likely used the trademarked name to avoid confusion with actual floppy disks). —Locke Cole • t • c 19:01, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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