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CREATE AN ACCOUNTSIGN INComputingMagazineInterviewHistory of Technology
What It Takes to Preserve Floppy Disks
Knowledge about the medium is as valuable as the content on the diskGwendolyn Rak26 May 20263 min readGwendolyn Rak is an assistant editor at IEEE Spectrum covering consumer electronics and careers.Leontien Talboom led a year-long project to develop better guidelines on accessing and preserving floppy disk data.
ELEANOR PARMENTER/CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Floppy disks are several decades old—many of the disks are degrading and the data stored on them is at risk of being lost. In response, Leontien Talboom, a technical analyst at Cambridge University Libraries and Archives, led a roughly year-long project preserving floppy disks called “Future Nostalgia,” which concluded in January.

Leontien Talboom


Leontien Talboom is a technical analyst at Cambridge University Libraries and Archives, where she transfers material from a wide range of storage media to make them accessible to archivists. IEEE Spectrum spoke to Talboom about her work preserving data from Cambridge’s collection of floppy disks and collecting knowledge about the disks themselves.Why is it important to preserve floppy disks now?Leontien Talboom: Two reasons. First, the physical media is starting to degrade. Floppy disks are made from plastic, but they’ve got a magnetic layer of iron oxide, and that’s deteriorating. A lot of floppy disks are found in attics or garages, which means they also suffer from mold.Second, a lot of people who developed floppy disks and systems that use floppy disks are starting to retire or pass away, which means that a lot of tacit knowledge is disappearing.Whom did you go to for that tacit knowledge?Talboom: I went to the retro computing community. Their work is more around preserving these machines to keep them running [than] the data that lives on the floppy disk. But they know their stuff about floppy disks.For example, they know that in a lot of the older disks, the inside of the disk—the doughnut—gets stuck to the top. So if you flex the casing, the doughnut falls down again. If I hadn’t known that, I would have assumed that those disks in our collection were broken or corrupt.What is the most difficult part of working with floppy disks?Talboom: Accessing the files can be quite challenging if we don’t understand the file system. Within libraries and archives, we get a lot of material from machines that are not as well loved. Many of the personal computers that you had at home, such as the Amstrad or ZX Spectrum or BBC Micro, are very well documented. But a bunch of our material comes from business or research systems. They’re not as nostalgic for people, so there’s not as big a community preserving this type of material.Do you have a favorite type of floppy disk?Talboom: Five and a quarter. The weirder the system, the more frustrating and fun it is. I quite like doing that detective work.The Amstrad disk has also really stolen my heart. The popularity of floppy disks is very geographically dependent. Our library, for example, has these Amstrad 3-inch disks. But if you go to the U.S., they’re really uncommon. They weren’t able to manufacture enough of these drives, and [3.5-inch disks] took over at a certain point. But they’re really cute.What’s the best method for sustainably storing data?Talboom: The main thing is actively looking after it. A lot of the floppy disks we get in the library haven’t been accessed for 20 or 30 years, which means that you need certain special hardware to actually read them, and then work with emulators or other tools to make these file formats accessible.Now that we’ve done that work and transferred it, we can monitor it and make sure it’s not suffering from anything like bit rot. We can also make decisions around migrating it to other file formats or working on specific file systems or unknown file formats in more detail.This article appears in the June 2026 print issue as “Leontien Talboom.”From Your Site ArticlesWho Really Invented the Thumb Drive? ›The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk ›Related Articles Around the WebFloppy disk storage | IBM ›Future Nostalgia: Safeguarding the knowledge of floppy disks ›archives5 questionsdata preservationtype:departmentsGwendolyn RakGwendolyn Rak is an assistant editor at IEEE Spectrum covering consumer electronics and careers. She holds a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics and history from Swarthmore College.
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Leontien Talboom, a technical analyst at Cambridge University Libraries and Archives, spearheaded a year-long project titled “Future Nostalgia” aimed at developing better guidelines for accessing and preserving floppy disk data. This initiative addressed the critical need to safeguard floppy disks, which are several decades old and are currently facing degradation, thereby risking the loss of the data they contain. The importance of this preservation stems from two primary concerns: the physical deterioration of the media and the loss of associated knowledge.

The physical media itself is susceptible to decay; floppy disks are constructed from plastic and contain a magnetic layer of iron oxide, both of which are deteriorating over time. Furthermore, these artifacts often reside in environments like attics or garages, making them vulnerable to mold. Beyond physical preservation, there is a significant concern regarding the disappearance of tacit knowledge related to floppy disk systems as the individuals who developed and used them are retiring or passing away.

Talboom noted that the community possessing this crucial tacit knowledge is primarily found within the retro computing community, which focuses more on preserving the functioning of the machines rather than the data itself. This group holds specific, practical knowledge regarding the physical behavior of older disks, such as understanding how the interior "doughnut" mechanism can become stuck if the casing is flexed.

A major challenge in working with floppy disks lies in accessing the contained files, which is often complicated by an insufficient understanding of the underlying file systems. While documentation exists for many personal computers, the material originating from business or research systems often lacks the community interest necessary for preservation efforts.

Regarding methods for sustainable data storage, Talboom emphasized that active stewardship is paramount. Since many archived floppy disks have been unaccessed for decades, specialized hardware is necessary to read them, often requiring the use of emulators or other tools to render the file formats accessible. Once data is successfully transferred, ongoing monitoring is required to prevent degradation, such as bit rot, and further decisions must be made regarding migration to alternative file formats or the detailed analysis of unknown file systems within the preserved materials. Talboom expressed a personal appreciation for the complexity of this detective work, particularly regarding the artifacts from systems like the Amstrad disks, highlighting the geographically dependent nature of floppy disk popularity.