Well, quite interesting.<p>However, these are not format (in the sens "file format") but more storage media, the title is not really right.<p>It's really sad that the picture are only "black shadow" representation (I was hoping that it'd be replaced by a true pict of the medium on :hover.<p>A few of these mediums are in fact not lost yet (DVD ? Memory Stick ? Smart Card ? CD ? Holographic Data Storage [this one can't be lost, it does not exist yet !!]).<p>Interesting data would have beginning/end date of manufacturing. And sorting the list would not have hurt.<p>Finally a few of the storage have way too many data available (18 track tape => no data at all, you kidding me right ? what's the point ?) and the dimensions and capacity does not always use the same units.<p>tl;dr: The idea is really interesting, but they should come back when they'll have something better to present. This article has really been botched.
Two or maybe three weeks ago I read here|slashdot|reddit (can't remember) talks about uses of magnetic tapes: they are still being used for large scale backups. Not outdated (unless you take the point they have a successor, which I am not sure is valid for those using MT)
They're missing the not-so-famous Avatar Shark Drive, which had 250MB disks (built with metal plates, like mini hard drives). I used to own two of them. Ran fine under Windows 2000, and they were quite fast too. Great for backups.
Mis-titled. A great number of these are still operational. They are just used less often or are harder to find. Obsolete or "lost" is not synonymous with "no longer leading edge".
I was always pissed that Sony didn't let Minidisc become the new floppy disk alternative.... it was perfect.<p>I know you could get data drives for them - but they were uncommon in the extreme.<p>Plus, every TV show and movie that wanted to show someone stealing data, because they looked cool.<p>(it was a magneto-optical disk in a hard case, pocket sized.