thumb|Imation SuperDisk drive
thumb|An LS-120 disk
The SuperDisk LS-120 is a high-speed, high-capacity alternative to the 90 mm (3.5 in), 1.44 MB floppy disk. The SuperDisk hardware was created by 3M's storage products group Imation in 1996,
The widespread introduction of rewritable CD-ROMs around the same time undermined the role for the SuperDisk. SuperDisk worldwide ceased manufacturing in 2003.
History
The design of the SuperDisk system came from an early 1990s project at Iomega. It is one of the last examples of floptical technology, where lasers are used to guide a magnetic head which is much smaller than those used in traditional floppy disk drives. Iomega orphaned the project around the time they decided to release the Zip drive in 1994. The idea eventually ended up at 3M, where the concept was refined and the design was licensed to established floppy drive makers Matsushita and Mitsubishi. Other companies involved in the development of SuperDisk include Compaq and OR Technology.
Matsushita continued development of the technology and released the LS-240. It has double the capacity of the LS-120 and the added feature of being able to format regular floppy disks to 32 MB capacity.
The newer LS-240 drives also have the ability to read and write regular 1.44 MB floppies at much higher densities in a format called "FD32MB". Described in the help file for the SuperWriter32 application included with the driver package, the increase of capacity for FD32MB is achieved through the use of shingled magnetic recording (SMR) to reduce track pitch to 18.8μm from the standard 187.5μm, allowing 777 tracks per side. This is combined with linear recording density improvements enabling 36-53 sectors per track through partial-response maximum-likelihood and zone bit recording.
The true capacity of these "SD120MB" drives
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