Japan Plans to Eliminate Floppy Disks

Japan Plans to Eliminate Floppy Disks 

The newspaper Nikkei Asia published over the weekend an unthinkable news about technology: the news had it that the Japanese government is starting a plan on how to eliminate floppy disks uses by government agencies, those information disks created in the 1960s for storage of data on computers, whose manufacture was interrupted more than a decade ago by Sony.

The Meguro wing, a jurisdiction within the metropolis of Tokyo, intends to transfer the data recorded on floppy disks and other physical storage media to the cloud in fiscal 2021. The Chiyoda wing plans the same type of transition, but in the coming years, while Minato, also in the Japanese capital, has already made the migration for two years.

Meguro's public fund manager, Yoichi Ono, explained to the publication that the capital's resistance to abandoning outdated technology, which is delaying the digital transition intended by Japan's central government, is due to a traditional concept that the device is "ultra-reliable." According to Ono, floppy "almost never broke or lost data." And to make matters worse, the products are still reusable. 

How does Japan intend to get rid of floppy?

The tokyo authorities' decision to finally eliminate floppy floppy may be more related to economic factors than personal convictions. According to Nikkei Asia, some institutions have started charging fees to convert floppy data into current technologies. Mizuho Bank in the Meguro ward, for example, is charging 50,000 Japanese yen, about $2,500, to use the media of the last century.

However, the expected transition could take years to complete by authorities who to this day have not replaced their inseparable personal stamps. In one of the main japanese government office districts, Chiyoda, in central Tokyo, the chiefs have already agreed on a date for the definitive elimination of floppy meters: 2026!