San Francisco is still using floppy disks to help trains run, here's why

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Remember the good ol’ floppy disks? In the era of DOS and the early years of Microsoft Windows, they were the most common medium of transferring data. Then CDs came along, tech evolved, hard drives arrived and floppies were confined to the annals of tech history.

One would’ve assumed that the floppy disks are well and truly done and dusted. However, surprisingly, floppy disks remain a part of the IT infrastructure in the heart of Silicon Valley. According to a report by ABC7News, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's train system is still heavily reliant on floppy disks.

As per the report, the SFMTA staff is still using floppy disks and they remain critical in the operations of running the trains. It’s been 26 years and every morning SFMTA staff still relies on floppy disks to tell the trains how to operate. Mariana Maguire, SFMTA Train Control Project, told ABC7News that the floppy disk is one component of one system. “The system that automatically controls our trains inside the subway”, as per Maguire, uses 5-inch floppy disks. The disks are used to load the software, which is running on the central central servers.

According to a report by Ars Tecnica, there had been plans to upgrade the system. An overhaul of the system, which included not using floppy disks, began six years ago in 2018. However, the Covid-19 pandemic hit those plans and now it is expected that the project will be completed in 2029.

Back in 1998, the SMTFA was the first agency to use floppy disks for this kind of work. The computers didn’t have any hard disks or too much storage space, which meant that floppy disks were used to load the software. The system is still very much prevalent and in use.

Jeffrey Tumlin, director, SMTFA, told ABC7News that there is a big risk of still using floppy disks. “The system is currently working just fine but we know that with each increasing year risk of data degradation on the floppy disks increases and that at some point there will be a catastrophic failure,” he said.