IBM tried to create a new floppy standard with their 2.88MB floppy drive, but the rest of the computer industry did not follow. Three other markets have come close to influencing the floppy drive market: (1) the CD-ROM market, (2) the floptical or laser servo technology market, and (3) the zip disk market. CD-ROM drives have made floppy drives almost obsolete because software applications are now so large, the applications require 20 or more floppy disks. CDs are preferable for the installation and running of applications, but are not suitable for storing small amounts of data. The price for a CD drive that can write and read data has dropped drastically, but it is still not comparable to the price of a floppy drive. I Computer buyers usually include a floppy drive with I thel! systems.

Floptical drives are floppy drives that use optical technology to move the read/write heads over the disk surface. They were the topic of many trade articles during the last several years, but floptical drives never made a big impact until now. Some people in the computer industry predicted the demise of the floppy drive by the year 2000. The product is called the a:drive. It holds 120MB of data, can read from and write to traditional nOKB and 1.44MB disks, fits in existing drive bays, and accesses data up to five times faster than the traditional drive.

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The a:drive (also called a LS-120 drive for laser servo 120MB) uses a patented laser servo technology developed by O.R. Technology, Compaq Computer Corp., Imation, and Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics Industries Ltd. (MKE). The a:drive connects to an IDE cable on the system. The a:drive sells for around $120 and the 120MB disks sell for about $20. Windows 95 Service Release 2, Windows 98, and Windows NT have built-in support for the a:drive. If ever a device has the possibility of tapping into a market stagnant for years, the a:drive is a perfect example of such a device.

The last product that has challenged the floppy drive market is Iomega's Zip drive. The Zip drive is not backward compatible with a floppy drive. A Zip disk holds 100MB of data and the external model runs off the parallel or USB port. A 250MB model, SCSI model, and a 1 GB model are also available.