I took a spin round my home office the other day to catalogue how many types of data storage device I could find. In my "obsolete technology drawer" - a set of plastic storage bins spanning almost three decades of personal computer technology - I found a stack of 5.25in floppies, lots of 3.5in floppies and an Imation SuperDisk that was supposed to replace both.
There was a cassette tape player designed to hook up to a Tandy 100 portable, a Travan tape drive and a defunct SyQuest SparQ drive. I also counted several optical drives including CD and DVD writers, Iomega Zip and Jaz drives, a tiny Iomega Clik drive that never caught on and lots of internal and external hard drives of all shapes and capacities.
