The floppy disk drive was invented in 1967 by Alan Shugart at IBM, originally using 8-inch disks. By the 1980s, improved designs led to the ubiquitous 3.5-inch, 1.44MB floppy disk drive. Floppy disks stored information in concentric tracks and sectors on magnetic media, allowing direct access unlike tapes. Though replaced by optical discs, floppy disks remained useful for software recovery and transferring data without networks.