The German Navy is searching for a new storage system to replace the aging 8-inch (20cm) floppy disks which are vital to the running of its Brandenburg class F123 frigates. According to an official tender document, the ideal answer to the German Navy’s problems would be a drop-in floppy disk replacement based upon a storage emulation system, reports Golem.de.
Germany’s Brandenburg class F123 frigates were commissioned in the mid 1990s, so it is understandable that floppy disks were seen as a handy removable storage medium. These drives are part of the frigates’ data acquisition system and, thus “central to controlling basic ship functions such as propulsion and power generation,” according to the source report.
It won’t be trivial to replace three decades old computer hardware seamlessly, while retaining the full functionality of the existing floppies. However, we note that other companies have wrestled similar problems in recent years. Moreover, there are plenty of emulator enthusiasts using technologies for floppy emulation solutions like Gotek drives which can emulate a variety of floppy drive standards and formats. There are other workable solutions already out there, but it all depends on who the German Navy chooses to deliver the project.
Here’s some useless retro crap: the 8" disks almost certainly cost more.
There was absolutely a reliability scale as you moved down the physical disk size: the 8 inch disks were more reliable than the 5.25, which were more reliable than the 3.5, due in large part to the market was requiring them to get cheaper as the drive tech matured, and thus you ended up with cheaper, less reliable media as you went along through the evolution.
40 years later, 8" disks nearly all read, 5.25" disks mostly all read, and 3.5" disks are an absolute crapshoot: I find that less than half of the ones I come across are still actually accessible, compared to about 90% of the 5.25" and 8" ones.
That experience of course has some personal bias, but that’s a story that holds pretty true talking to anyone who tries to archive old floppies, so it’s probably reasonable enough to use for actual data.
So, if you wanted the most reliable option, and since the military probably doesn’t care what it costs, you’d pick a 8" disk.