The floppy disk ( or a 3 Â 1\/2 floppy for today 's standard ) was a removable magnetic storage medium mainly used for computers and laptops , but other devices used them as well , like some early digital cameras , and even a Japanese NES accessory . A floppy drive is the part of the computer that reads from and writes to the floppy disk . Floppy disk drive and floppy media manufacturers specify an unformatted capacity , which is , for example , 2.0 MB for a standard 3 Â 1\/2 - inch HD floppy .