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

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.