A floppy disk drive is a device used to read and write data on a floppy disk, a type of removable storage medium. Floppy disks were commonly used from the late 1970s to the early 2000s for data transfer and storage. The drive typically connects to a computer and allows users to access files stored on the disk. Floppy disks come in various sizes, with the most common being the 3.5-inch disk, which can hold up to 1.44 megabytes of data. Although largely replaced by more advanced storage solutions like USB flash drives and cloud storage, floppy disk drives were essential for early personal computing and data sharing.