SuperDisk - Criticism and Obsolescence

Criticism and Obsolescence

Apple Macintosh users' primary complaint was that the SuperDisk drive cannot read the GCR 800 KB or 400 KB diskettes used by older Macintoshes. These disks could be used in the SuperDisk drive on a Mac, but only if formatted to PC 720 KB MFM format.

The biggest hurdle standing in the way of success was that Iomega's Zip drive had been out for 3 years at that point. It had enough popularity to leave the public uninterested in SuperDisk technology despite its superior design and its compatibility with the standard floppy disk.

By 2000, the entire removable magnetic disk category quickly faced obsolescence by the falling prices of CD-R and CD-RW drives and solid-state (USB flash drives or USB keydrives), and the SuperDisk was no exception; it has since been quietly discontinued, as were the other special disks, which are becoming hard to find.

Under Windows XP, a USB-based 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. 120MB disks are also accessed via A: or B:.

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