A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles. They are read and written by a floppy disk drive (FDD).

Invented by IBM, floppy disks in , and forms were a ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s to the 2000s.

While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy industrial computer equipment, they have been superseded by data storage methods with much greater capacity, such as USB flash drives, portable external hard disk drives, optical discs, memory cards, and computer networks.

History

The earliest floppy disks, invented in the late 1960s, were in diameter; they became commercially available in 1971. These disks and associated drives were produced and improved upon by IBM and other companies such as Memorex, Shugart Associates, and Burroughs Corporation. The term "floppy disk" appeared in print as early as 1970, and although in 1973 IBM announced its first media as "Type 1 Diskette" the industry continued to use the terms "floppy disk" or "floppy".

In 1976, Shugart Associates introduced the first 5¼-inch FDD. By 1978 there were more than 10 manufacturers producing such FDDs. There were competing floppy disk formats, with hard and soft sector versions and encoding schemes such as FM, MFM and GCR. The 5 1/4 inch format displaced the 8-inch one for most applications, and the hard sectored disk format disappeared. In 1984, IBM introduced the 1.2 MB dual sided floppy disk along with its AT model. IBM started using the 720 kB double density 3.5" microfloppy disk on its Convertible laptop computer and the 1.44 MB high density version with the PS/2 line in 1986. These disk drives could be added to older PC models. In 1988 IBM introduced a drive for 2.88 MB "DSED" diskettes in its top-of-the-line PS/2 models; it was a commercial failure.

Throughout the early 1980s, limitations of the 5¼-inch format became clear. Originally designed to be more practical than the 8-inch format, it was itself too large; as the quality of recording media grew, data could be stored in a smaller area. A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2, 2½, 3 and 3½ inches (and Sony's 90.0 mm × 94.0 mm disk) offered by various companies. They all shared a number of advantages over the old format, including a rigid case with a sliding write protection tab, protecting them from damage; the large market share of the 5¼-inch format made it difficult for these new formats to gain significant market share. A variant on the Sony design, introduced in 1982 by a large number of manufacturers, was then rapidly adopted; by 1988 the 3½-inch was outselling the 5¼-inch.

By the end of the 1980s, the 5¼-inch disks had been superseded by the 3½-inch disks. By the mid-1990s the 5¼-inch drives had virtually disappeared as the 3½-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk. The advantages of the 3½-inch disk were its smaller size and its plastic case which provided better protection from dirt and other environmental risks.

Ubiquity

Floppy disks became ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s in their use with personal computers and home computers to distribute software, transfer data, and create backups. Before hard disks became affordable, floppy disks were often used to store a computer's operating system (OS). Most home computers had a primary OS and BASIC stored as ROM, with the option of loading a more advanced disk operating system from a floppy disk. By the early 1990s, the increasing software size meant large packages like Windows or Adobe Photoshop required a dozen disks or more. In 1996, there were an estimated five billion floppy disks in use. Then, distribution of larger packages was gradually replaced by CD-ROM and online distribution (for smaller programs). An attempt to continue the floppy disk was the SuperDisk in the late 1990s, with a capacity of 120 MB and backward compatible with standard 3½-inch floppies. External USB-based floppy disk drives are available; many modern systems provide firmware support for booting from such a drive.

Decline

Mechanically incompatible higher-density disks were introduced, like the Iomega Zip disk. Adoption was limited by the competition between proprietary formats and the need to buy expensive drives for computers where the disks would be used. In some cases, failure in market penetration was exacerbated by release of higher-capacity versions of the drive and media not backward compatible with the original drives, dividing the users between new and old adopters. A chicken or the egg scenario ensued, with consumers wary of making costly investments into unproven and rapidly changing technologies, resulting in none of the technologies being able to prove themselves and stabilize their market presence. Recordable CDs with even greater capacity, compatible with existing infrastructure of CD-ROM drives, made the new floppy technologies redundant, their reusability diminished by their extremely low cost and countered by re-writable CDs. Networking, advancements in flash-based devices and widespread adoption of USB provided another alternative that made optical storage obsolete for some purposes. The rise of file sharing and multi-megapixel digital photography encouraged the use of files larger than most 3½-inch disks could hold. Floppy disks were commonly used as sneakernet carriers for file transfer, but the broad availability of LANs and fast Internet connections provided a simpler and faster method of transferring such files. Other removable storage devices have advantages in both capacity and performance when network connections are unavailable or when networks are inadequate.

In 1991, Commodore introduced the CDTV, with a CD-ROM drive in place of the floppy drive. The kickstart of AmigaOS was stored in ROM as in other Amigas, making CDTV still booting from floppy rather than from CD-ROM, like other Amigas. Apple introduced the iMac in 1998 with a CD-ROM drive but no floppy drive; this made USB-connected floppy drives popular accessories as the iMac came without any writable removable media device. This transition from standard floppies was relatively easy for Apple, since all Macintosh models originally designed to use a CD-ROM drive could boot and install their OS from CD-ROM early on. PC manufacturers were initially reluctant to remove the floppy drive because many IT departments appreciated the Sneakernet built-in file-transfer mechanism that always worked and required no device driver to operate properly. Then, manufacturers and retailers progressively reduced the availability floppy drives and disks; widespread support for USB flash drives and BIOS boot support helped them. In February 2003, Dell announced floppy drives would no longer be pre-installed on Dell Dimension home computers, although still available as a selectable option and purchasable as an aftermarket OEM add-on. On 29 January 2007, PC World stated that only 2% of the computers they sold contained built-in floppy disk drives; once present stocks were exhausted, no more standard floppies would be sold. In 2009, Hewlett-Packard stopped supplying standard floppy drives on business desktops.

Current use

Floppy disks are used for emergency boots in aging systems lacking support for other bootable media, and for BIOS updates since most BIOS and firmware programs can still be executed from bootable floppy disks. If BIOS updates fail or become corrupt, floppy drives can be used to perform a recovery. The music and theatre industries still use equipment requiring standard floppy disks (i.e. synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, sequencers, and lighting consoles). Industrial automation equipment such as programmable machinery and industrial robots may not have a USB interface; data and programs are then loaded from disks, damageable in industrial environments. This may not be replaced due to cost or requirement for continuous availability; existing software emulation and virtualization do not solve this problem because no operating system is present or a customized operating system is used that has no drivers for USB devices. Hardware floppy disk emulators can be made to interface floppy disk controllers to a USB port that for flash drives; several manufacturers make such emulators.

For more than two decades, the floppy disk was the primary external writable storage device used. Most computing environments before the 1990s were non-networked and floppy disks were the primary means of transferring data between computers. Unlike hard disks, floppy disks are handled and seen; even a novice user can identify a floppy disk. Because of these factors, the image of the floppy disk has become a metaphor for saving data. The floppy disk symbol is still used by software on user interface elements related to saving files, such as the release of Microsoft Office 2010, even though such disks are increasingly obsolete.

Design

Structure

The 5¼-inch disk has a large circular hole in the center for the drive's spindle and a small oval aperture in both sides of the plastic to allow the drive's heads to read and write data; the magnetic medium can be spun by rotating it from the middle hole. A small notch on the right of the disk identifies that it is writable, detected by a mechanical switch or phototransistor above it; if it is not present, the disk is read-only. Punch devices were sold to convert read-only disks to writable ones and enable writing on the unused side of single sided disks; such modified disks became known as flippy disks. Tape may be used over the notch to protect writable disks from unwanted writing.

Another LED/photo-transistor pair located near the center of the disk detects the ''index hole'' once per rotation in the magnetic disk; it is used to detect the angular start of each track and whether or not the disk is rotating at the correct speed. Early 8-inch and 5¼-inch disks had physical holes for each sector and were termed ''hard sectored'' disks. Later ''soft sectored'' disks had only one index hole, and sector position was determined by the disk controller or low level software from patterns marking the start of a sector. Generally, the same drives were used to read and write both types of disks, with only the disks and disk controllers differing. Some operating systems utilizing soft sectors, such as Apple DOS, did not use the index hole; the drives designed for such systems often lacked the corresponding sensor; this was mainly a hardware cost saving measure.

Inside the disk are two layers of fabric, with the medium sandwiched in the middle. The fabric is designed to reduce friction between the medium and the outer casing, and catch particles of debris abraded off the disk to keep them from accumulating on the heads. The outer casing is usually a one-part sheet, double-folded with flaps glued or spot-welded together. The 8-inch disk had read-only logic that was the reverse of the 5¼-inch disk, with the slot on the side having to be taped over to allow ''writing''.

The core of the 3½-inch disk is the same as the other two disks, but the front has only a label and a small aperture for reading and writing data, protected by the ''slider'' - a spring-loaded metal or plastic cover, pushed to the side on entry into the drive. Rather than having a hole in the center, it has a metal hub which mates to the spindle of the drive. Typical 3½-inch disk magnetic coating materials are:

DD: 2 µm magnetic iron oxide (Coercivity approx. 300 OE Oersted)

HD: 1.2 µm cobalt doped iron oxide (Coercivity approx. 600 OE)

ED: 3 µm Barium ferrite (Coercivity approx. 750 OE)

Two holes at the bottom left and right indicate whether the disk is write-protected and whether it is high-density; these holes are spaced as far apart as the holes in punched A4 paper, allowing write-protected high-density floppies to be clipped into standard ring binders. A notch at top right ensures that the disk is in the correct orientation and an arrow at top left indicating direction of insertion. The drive usually has a button that when pressed ejects the disk with varying degrees of force, the discrepancy due to the ejection force provided by the spring of the slider cover. In IBM PC compatibles, a floppy disk may be inserted or ejected manually at any time. As the drive's status is not continuously monitored, software may make assumptions differing from the actual state of the drive, sometimes leading to error messages or lost data.

One of the chief usability problems of the floppy disk is its vulnerability; even inside a closed plastic housing, the disk medium is highly sensitive to dust, condensation and temperature extremes. As with all magnetic storage, it is vulnerable to magnetic fields. Blank disks have been distributed with an extensive set of warnings, cautioning the user not to expose it to dangerous conditions. Disks must not be roughly treated or removed from the drive while the magnetic media is still spinning, since doing so is likely to cause damage to the disk, drive head, or stored data. On the other hand, the 3½-inch floppy has been lauded for its mechanical usability by HCI expert Donald Norman:

Operation

A spindle motor in the drive rotates the magnetic medium at a certain speed, while a stepper motor-operated mechanism moves the magnetic read/write head(s) along the surface of the disk. Both read and write operations require the media to be rotating and the head to contact the disk media, an action accomplished by a "disk load" solenoid. To write data, current is sent through a coil in the head as the media rotates. The head's magnetic field aligns the magnetic particles directly below the head on the media. When the current is reversed the particles align in the opposite direction encoding the data digitally. To read data, the magnetic particles in the media induce a tiny voltage in the head coil as they pass under it. This small signal is amplified and sent to the floppy disk controller, which converts the streams of pulses from the media into data, checks it for errors, and sends it to the host computer system.

A blank "unformatted" diskette has a coating of magnetic oxide with no magnetic order to the particles. During formatting, the particles are aligned forming a pattern of magnetized tracks, each broken up into sectors, enabling the controller to properly read and write data. The tracks are concentric rings around the center, with spaces between tracks where no data is written; gaps with padding bytes are provided between the sectors and at the end of the track to allow for slight speed variations in the disk drive, and to permit better interoperability with disk drives connected to other similar systems. Each sector of data has a header that identifies the sector location on the disk. A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is written into the sector headers and at the end of the user data so that the disk controller can detect potential errors. Some errors are soft and can be resolved by automatically re-trying the read operation; other errors are permanent and the disk controller will signal a failure to the operating system if multiple attempts to read the data still fail.

After a disk is inserted, a catch or lever at the front of the drive is manually lowered to prevent the disk from accidentally emerging, engage the spindle clamping hub, and in two-sided drives, engage the second read/write head with the media. In some 5¼-inch drives, insertion of the disk compresses and locks an ejection spring which partially ejects the disk upon opening the catch or lever. This enables a smaller concave area for the thumb and fingers to grasp the disk during removal. Newer 5¼-inch drives and all 3½-inch drives automatically engage the spindle and heads when a disk is inserted, doing the opposite with the press of the eject button. On Apple Macintosh computers with built-in floppy drives, the ejection button is replaced by software controlling an eject motor which only does so when the operating system no longer needs to access the drive. The user could drag the image of the floppy drive to the trash can on the desktop to eject the disk. The first such drives were the slim "Twiggy" drives of the late Apple Lisa. In the case of a power failure or drive malfunction, a loaded disk can removed manually by inserting a straightened paper clip into a small hole at the drive's front panel, forcing the disk to eject manually. External 3½-inch drives from Apple ''were'' equipped with eject buttons; the button was ignored when the drive was plugged into a Mac, but not if the drive was used with an Apple II, as ProDOS did not support software-controlled ejection. Some other computer designs, such as the Commodore Amiga, monitor for a new disk continuously and have button ejection mechanisms.

Formats

Most common floppy disks in use are formatted in the FAT12 file system format, though sometimes disks may use a more exotic file system and/or be superformatted to accommodate slightly more data. Some floppy-based Linux distributions utilize such techniques. The capacity numbers given in this section assume FAT12 formatting unless otherwise noted.

Different sizes of floppy disks are fundamentally incompatible, and disks can fit only one size of drive. Drives with 3½-inch and 5¼-inch slots were available during the transition period between the sizes, but they contained two separate drive mechanisms. In addition, there are many subtle, usually software-driven incompatibilities between the two. 5¼-inch disks formatted for use with Apple II computers would be unreadable and treated as unformatted on a Commodore. As computer platforms began to form, attempts were made at interchangeability. For example, the "Superdrive" included from the Macintosh SE to the iMac could read, write and format IBM PC-format 3½-inch disks, but few IBM-compatible computers had drives that did the reverse. 8-inch, 5¼-inch and 3½-inch drives were manufactured in a variety of sizes, most to fit standardized drive bays. Alongside the common disk sizes were non-classical sizes for specialized systems.

3½-inch floppy disk

In IBM-compatible PCs, the three densities of 3½-inch floppy disks are partially compatible. Higher density drives can read, write and format lower density media without problems, provided the correct media is used. If a disk is formatted at the wrong density, there is a large risk of data loss due to magnetic mismatch between the oxide and the drive head. Fresh disks manufactured as high density can theoretically be formatted double density only if no information has been written on the disk in high density, or the disk has been thoroughly demagnetized with a bulk eraser, the reason being that the magnetic strength of a high density record is stronger and overrides lower density, remaining on the disk and causing problems. There are people who use downformatted (ED→HD→DD) or overformatted (DD→HD→ED) disks without problems; doing so constitutes a data risk, so the benefits (e.g. increased space or interoperability) should be weighed against the risks (data loss, permanent disk damage).

The holes on the right side of a 3½-inch disk can be altered as to make some disk drives and operating systems treat the disk as one of higher or lower density, for bidirectional compatibility or economical reasons. Possible modifications include: Some computers, e.g. the PS/2 and Acorn Archimedes, ignored these holes altogether.

Taping or covering the excessive right holes on HD and ED to 'downgrade' them to DD format. This is to resolve compatibility issues with older devices using DD disks like some electronic keyboard instruments and samplers, where DD disks are useful since factories reduced manufacturing of such disks after the mid-1990s. By default, many older HD drives recognize ED disks as DD since they lack the HD-specific holes and the drives cannot detect the ED-specific hole; most DD drives handle ED and even HD disks as DD.

Drilling or burning an HD-like hole symmetrical to the write-protect hole in order to format the disk as HD. This was a popular practice during the early 1990s, as most people switched from DD to HD for another 720 kB of disk space; special hole punchers were made to easily make this extra (square) hole in a floppy.

Drilling or burning an HD-like hole under the ED-specific hole of an ED disk for 'downgrading' it to HD format. If there are many unusable ED disks due to the lack of a specific ED drive, this turns them into HD disks.

Drilling or burning an ED-like hole over the HD-specific hole (which gets covered) of an HD disk for 'upgrading' it to ED format. If there are many unusable HD disks due to the lack of a specific HD drive, this turns them into ED disks.

It is possible (even if hardly officially supported on any system) to make a 3½-inch floppy disk drive to be recognized by a system as a 5¼-inch 360 kB or 1200 kB on IBM PC compatibles by changing the CMOS BIOS settings; applications include data exchange with obsolete CP/M systems like an Amstrad CPC.

5¼-inch floppy disk

The head gap of an 80-track high-density (1.2 MB in the MFM format) 5¼-inch drive is shorter than that of a 40-track double-density (360 kB) drive but can format, read and write 40-track disks well ''provided'' the controller supports double stepping or has a switch to do such a process. A blank 40-track disk formatted and written on an 80-track drive can be taken to its native drive without problems, and a disk formatted on a 40-track drive can be used on an 80-track drive. Disks written on a 40-track drive and then updated on an 80 track drive become permanently unreadable on any 40-track drives due to track width incompatibility (special "very slow" programs able to circumvent this), among other bad scenarios. Prior to those problems, there was a period when figuring out the right side of a "single sided" disk was a problem; both RadioShack and Apple used 180 kB single-sided 5¼-inch disks, labeled "single sided", certified for use on only one side, but coated in magnetic material on both sides. The disks would work on both machines, with RadioShack TRS-80 Model I computers using one side and the Apple II machines the other, regardless available software which could make sense of the other format.

In the 1980s, disk notchers were purchaseable which allowed users to punch a second write-unprotect notch in disks and thus use them as flippy disks (both sides could be used and the data storage capacity was doubled); other users made do with a hole punch or scissors and (optionally) another diskette to use as a template. The practice was particularly prevalent among home users despite warnings of damage to the disk surface due to the medium rotating opposite its intended direction. Flippy disks were adopted by some manufacturers, with a few programs being sold in this medium. They were used for software distribution on systems that could be used with 40- and 80-track drives but could not read 40-track disks in an 80 track drive. The practice faded with the increased use of double-sided drives.

Non-standard formats

Sizes, performance and capacity

Floppy disk size is often referred to in inches, even in countries using metric and though the size is defined in metric. The ANSI specification of 3½-inch disks is entitled in part "90 mm (3.5 in)" though 90 mm is closer to 3.54 inches. Formatted capacities are generally set in terms of kilobytes and megabytes.

{|class="wikitable" |+ Historical sequence of floppy disk formats |- ! Disk format ! Year introduced ! Formatted Storage capacity ! Marketed capacity |- | 8-inch: IBM 23FD (read-only) | style="text-align: center" | 1971 | style="text-align: right" | 79.7 kB | style="text-align: right" | ? |- | 8-inch: Memorex 650 | style="text-align: center" | 1972 | style="text-align: right" | 179 kB | style="text-align: right" | 1.5 megabit [unformatted] |- | 8-inch: SSSD IBM 33FD / Shugart 901 | style="text-align: center" | 1973 | style="text-align: right" | 237.25 kB | style="text-align: right" | 3.1 Mbits unformatted |- | 8-inch: DSSD IBM 43FD / Shugart 850 | style="text-align: center" | 1976 | style="text-align: right" | 500.5 kB | style="text-align: right" | 6.2 Mbits unformatted |- | 5¼-inch (35 track) Shugart SA 400 | style="text-align: center" | 1976 | style="text-align: right" | 87.5 kB | style="text-align: right" | 110 kB |- | 8-inch DSDD IBM 53FD / Shugart 850 | style="text-align: center" | 1977 | style="text-align: right" | 980 kB (CP/M) - 1200 kB (MS-DOS FAT) | style="text-align: right" | 1.2 MB |- | 5¼-inch DD | style="text-align: center" | 1978 | style="text-align: right" | 360 or 800 kB | style="text-align: right" | 360 kB |- | 5¼-inch Apple Disk II (Pre-DOS 3.3) | style="text-align: center" | 1978 | style="text-align: right" | 113.75 kB (256 byte sectors, 13 sectors/track, 35 tracks) | style="text-align: right" | 113 kB |- | 5¼-inch Apple Disk II (DOS 3.3) | style="text-align: center" | 1980 | style="text-align: right" | 140 kB (256 byte sectors, 16 sectors/track, 35 tracks) | style="text-align: right" | 140 kB |- | 3½-inch HP single sided | style="text-align: center" | 1982 | style="text-align: right" | 256×16×70 = 280 kB | style="text-align: right" | 264 kB |- | 3-inch | style="text-align: center" | 1982 | style="text-align: right" | 360 kB | style="text-align: right" | 125 kB (SS/SD), 500 kB (DS/DD) |- | 3½-inch (DD at release) | style="text-align: center" | 1983 | style="text-align: right" | 720 kB (400 SS, 800 DS on Macintosh, 880 DS on Amiga) | style="text-align: right" | 1 MB |- | 5¼-inch QD | style="text-align: center" | | style="text-align: right" | 720 kB | style="text-align: right" | 720 kB |- | 5¼-inch HD | style="text-align: center" | 1982 | style="text-align: right" | 1155 kB | style="text-align: right" | 1.2 MB |- | 3-inch DD | style="text-align: center" | 1984 | style="text-align: right" | 720 kB | style="text-align: right" | ? |- | 3-inch Mitsumi Quick Disk | style="text-align: center" | 1985 | style="text-align: right" | 128 to 256 kB | style="text-align: right" | ? |- | 2-inch | style="text-align: center" | 1989 | style="text-align: right" | 720 kB | style="text-align: right" | ? |- | 2½-inch | style="text-align: center" | 1986 | style="text-align: right" | ? | style="text-align: right" | ? |- | 5¼-inch Perpendicular | style="text-align: center" | 1986 | style="text-align: right" | 10 MB | style="text-align: right" | ? |- | 3½-inch HD | style="text-align: center" | 1987 | style="text-align: right" | 1440 kB | style="text-align: right" | 1.44 MB (2.0 MB unformatted) |- | 3½-inch ED | style="text-align: center" | 1987 | style="text-align: right" | 2880 kB | style="text-align: right" | 2.88 MB |- | 3½-inch Floptical (LS) | style="text-align: center" | 1991 | style="text-align: right" | 21000 kB | style="text-align: right" | 21 MB |- | 3½-inch LS-120 | style="text-align: center" | 1996 | style="text-align: right" | 120.375 MB | style="text-align: right" | 120 MB |- | 3½-inch LS-240 | style="text-align: center" | 1997 | style="text-align: right" | 240.75 MB | style="text-align: right" | 240 MB |- | 3½-inch HiFD | style="text-align: center" | 1998/99 | style="text-align: right" | 150/200 MB | style="text-align: right" | 150/200 MB |- | colspan=4 style="text-align: center" | Abbreviations: |- | colspan=4 | Formatted Storage Capacity is total size of all sectors on the disk:

For 8-inch see Table of 8-inch floppy formats IBM 8-inch formats. Spare, hidden and otherwise reserved sectors are included in this number.

For 5¼- and 3½-inch capacities quoted are from subsystem or system vendor statements.

Marketed Capacity is the capacity, typically unformatted, by the original media OEM vendor or in the case of IBM media, the first OEM thereafter. Other formats may get more or less capacity from the same drives and disks. |}

Data is generally written to floppy disks in sectors (angular blocks) and tracks (concentric rings at a constant radius). For example, the HD format of 3½-inch floppy disks uses 512 bytes per sector, 18 sectors per track, 80 tracks per side and two sides, for a total of 1,474,560 bytes per disk. Some disk controllers can vary these parameters at the user's request, increasing storage on the disk, although they may not be able to be read on machines with other controllers. For example, Microsoft applications were often distributed on 3½-inch 1.68 MB DMF disks formatted with 21 sectors instead of 18; they could still be recognized by a standard controller. On the IBM PC, MSX and most other microcomputer platforms, disks were written using a Constant Angular Velocity (CAV) format, with the disk spinning at a constant speed and the sectors hold the same amount of information on each track regardless of radial location.

This was not the most efficient way to use the disk surface with available drive electronics; because the sectors have constant angular size, the 512 bytes in each sector are compressed more near the disk's center. A more space-efficient technique would be to increase the number of sectors per track toward the outer edge of the disk, from 18 to 30 for instance, thereby keeping constant the amount of physical disk space used for storing each sector; an example is zone bit recording. Apple implemented this in early Macintosh computers by spinning the disk slower when the head was at the edge, while maintaining the data rate, allowing 400 kB of storage per side and an extra 160 kB on a double-sided disk. This higher capacity came with a disadvantage: the format used a unique drive mechanism and control circuitry, meaning that Mac disks could not be read on other computers. Apple eventually reverted to constant angular velocity on HD floppy disks with their later machines, still unique to Apple as they supported the older variable-speed formats.

Disk formatting is usually done by a utility program supplied by the computer OS manufacturer; generally, it sets up a file storage directory system on the disk, and initializes its sectors and tracks. Areas of the disk unusable for storage due to flaws can be locked (marked as "bad sectors") so that the operating system does not attempt to use them. This was time consuming so many environments had quick formatting which skipped the error checking process. When floppy disks were often used, disks pre-formatted for popular computers were sold. A formatted floppy disk does not include the sector and track headings of an unformatted disk; the difference in storage between them depends on the drive's application. Floppy disk drive and media manufacturers specify the unformatted capacity (for example, 2 MB for a standard 3½-inch HD floppy). It is implied that this should not be exceeded, since doing so will most likely result in performance problems. DMF was introduced permitting 1.68 MB to fit onto an otherwise standard 3½-inch disk; utilities then appeared allowing disks to be formatted as such.

Mixtures of decimal prefixes and binary sector sizes require care to properly calculate total capacity. Whereas semiconductor memory naturally favors powers of two (size doubles each time an address pin is added to the integrated circuit), the capacity of a disk drive is the product of sector size, sectors per track, tracks per side and sides (which in hard disk drives can be greater than 2). Although other sector sizes have been known in the past, formatted sector sizes are now almost always set to powers of two (256 bytes, 512 bytes, etc.), and in some cases, disk capacity is calculated as multiples of the sector size rather than in just bytes, leading to a combination of decimal multiples of sectors and binary sector sizes. For example, 1.44 MB 3½-inch HD disks have the "M" prefix peculiar to their context, coming from their capacity of 2880 512-byte sectors (1,440 kB), inconsistent with either a decimal megabyte nor a binary mebibyte (MiB). Hence, these disks hold 1.47 MB or 1.41 MiB. Usable data capacity is a function of the disk format used, which in turn is determined by the FDD controller and its settings. Differences between such formats can result in capacities ranging from approximately 1300 kB up to 1760 kB (1.80 MB) on a "standard" 3½-inch High Density floppy (and even up to near 2 MB with utilities like 2MGUI). The highest capacity techniques require much tighter matching of drive head geometry between drives, something not always possible and unreliable. For example, the LS-240 drive supports a 32 MB capacity on standard 3½-inch HD disks, but it is, however, a write-once technique, and requires its own drive.

Before overhead processing, 3½-inch HD floppy drives typically have a maximum transfer rate of 1000 kb/s, with a 1× CD 1.2 times as fast at maximum and a 1× DVD 11 times as fast. While the floppy disk data transfer rate cannot easily be changed, overall performance can be improved by optimizing drive access times, shortening some BIOS introduced delays (especially on IBM PC compatible platforms), and changing the ''sector:shift'' parameter of a disk. Because of overhead and these additional delays, the average sequential read speed is 30–70 kB/s instead of 125 kB/s. Double-sided extended-density (DSED) 3½-inch floppy disks, introduced by Toshiba in 1987 and adopted by IBM on the PS/2 in 1994, doubled the number of sectors per track, thereby providing double the data rate and capacity of conventional DSHD 3½-inch drives. Some USB floppy drives use caching to increase performance while being built from standard speed drives; the X10 accelerated floppy drive was an attempt to physically increase floppy performance.

See also

Disk image

dd (Unix)

Don't Copy That Floppy

Semi-virtual diskette

References

Bibliography

Weyhrich, Steven (2005). "The Disk II": A detailed essay describing one of the first commercial floppy disk drives (from the Apple II History website)

Immers, Richard; Neufeld, Gerald G. (1984). ''Inside Commodore DOS. The Complete Guide to the 1541 Disk Operating System''. DATAMOST, Inc & Reston Publishing Company, Inc. (Prentice-Hall). ISBN 0-8359-3091-2.

Englisch, Lothar; Szczepanowski, Norbert (1984). ''The Anatomy of the 1541 Disk Drive''. Grand Rapids, MI: Abacus Software (translated from the original 1983 German edition, Düsseldorf: Data Becker GmbH). ISBN 0-916439-01-1.

Hewlett Packard: 9121D/S Disc Memory Operator's Manual; Printed 1 September 1982; Part No. 09121-90000

External links

Programming Floppy Disk Controllers

HowStuffWorks: How Floppy Disk Drives Work

Computer Hope: Information about computer floppy drives

NCITS (mention of ANSI X3.162 and X3.171 floppy standards)

Floppy Drive Tech Info

Floppy disk drives and media technical information

Category:Computer storage media Category:Legacy hardware Category:American inventions Category:Floppy disk computer storage

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name	The Residents
background	group_or_band
origin	Shreveport, Louisiana, United States
genre	Avant-garde, experimental, multimedia art
years active	1966 1969–present
label	Ralph RecordsPre RecordsCharisma RecordsCordless RecordingsMute Records
associated acts	SnakefingerRenaldo and the Loaf
website	www.residents.com
current members	Unknown }}

The Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of "The Residents" was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects, ten DVDs. They have undertaken seven major world tours and scored multiple films. Pioneers in exploring the potential of CD-ROM and similar technologies, The Residents have won several awards for their multimedia projects. Ralph Records, a record label focusing on avant garde music, was started by The Residents.

Throughout the group's existence, the individual members have ostensibly attempted to operate under anonymity, preferring instead to have attention focused on their art output. Much outside speculation and rumor has focused on this aspect of the group. In public, the group appears silent and costumed, often wearing eyeball helmets, top hats and tuxedos - a long-lasting costume now recognized as their signature iconography.

Their albums generally fall into two categories: deconstructions of Western popular music, or complex conceptual pieces, composed around a theme, theory or plot. They are noted for surrealistic lyrics and sound, and disregard for conventional music composition.

History

Origins

The Residents supposedly hail from Shreveport, Louisiana, where they met in high school in the 1960s. In 1966, members headed west to San Francisco, California. After their truck broke down in San Mateo, they decided to remain there. Like all information pertaining to the early days of the band, this is provided by The Cryptic Corporation and may or may not be invented.

While attempting to make a living, they began to experiment with tape machines, photography, and anything remotely to do with art that they could get their hands on. Word of their experimentation spread and in 1969, a British guitarist and multi-instrumentalist named Phil Lithman and the mysterious N. Senada (whom Lithman had picked up in Bavaria where the aged avant-gardist was recording birds singing) paid them a visit, and decided to remain.

The two Europeans would become great influences on the band. Lithman's guitar playing technique earned him the nickname Snakefinger, after his frantic playing on the violin during the performance with the Residents at The Boarding House in San Francisco 1971, where his fingers' speed made them look like snakes in the eyes of the less-musically proficient but imaginative Residents.

The group purchased crude recording equipment and instruments and began to make tapes, refusing to let an almost complete lack of musical proficiency stand in the way.

1969–1972: Residents Unincorporated

In 1969 the group began to make the first of their unreleased tapes. Rumors have surfaced of two (of perhaps hundreds) of unreleased reel-to-reel items titled ''Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor'' and ''The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger''. The actual titles are in question (as is the notion that these were album-length recordings), but the first title has been confirmed by a former head of the now defunct Smelly Tongues fan club. Further evidence of pre-1970 recordings surfaced with the release of the song "I Hear You Got Religion", supposedly recorded in 1969, and released originally as a downloadable track from Ralph America in 1999. Cryptic says there are lots of tapes dating back decades, but they were all recorded before the group had officially become "The Residents" so the band does not consider them to be part of their discography.

The album ''The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger'' has never been released in any form. Uncle Willie, former Residents fan club president, wrote in his book ''Uncle Willie's Highly Opinionated Guide to The Residents'' that, while searching through the band's archives, he came across "a suite named 'The Ballad Of Stuffed Trigger'," but not a complete album.

In 1971 the group sent a reel-to-reel tape to Hal Halverstadt at Warner Brothers, since he had worked with Captain Beefheart (one of the group's musical heroes). Halverstadt was not overly impressed with "The Warner Bros. Album" (he describes it as "okay at best" in "Uncle Willie's Cryptic Guide to the Residents"), but awarded the tape an "A for Ariginality". Because the band had not included any name in the return address, the rejection slip was simply addressed to "The Residents". The members of the group then decided that this would be the name they would use, first becoming Residents Unincorporated, then shortening it to the current name.

The first performance of the band using the name "The Residents" was at The Boarding House in San Francisco in 1971. That same year another tape was completed called ''Baby Sex''. The original cover art for the tape box was a silk-screened copy of an old photo depicting a woman fellating a small child. (Considered artistically rude at that time, it would be viewed as child pornography today.)

In 1972 they moved to San Francisco and formed Ralph Records. By this time, The Cryptic Corporation was operating as a partnership and incorporated to take over the running of Ralph Records.

1972–1980: Album era

Before the "Santa Dog" single and while recording ''Meet the Residents'', The Residents undertook one of their first major projects: the ambitious Vileness Fats film project. Intended to be the first-ever long form music video, The Residents saw this project as the opportunity to create the ultimate cult film. After four years of filming (from 1972 to 1976) the project was reluctantly canceled because of time, space and monetary constraints. Fifteen hours of footage were shot for the project yet only about three-quarters of an hour of that footage has ever been released.

"Santa Dog" is considered by The Residents themselves and their fans to be the "official" start of the band's recorded output. This is so because it was the first to be released to the public. Shortly after this release, the band left San Mateo and relocated to San Francisco. They sent copies of "Santa Dog" to west coast radio stations with no response until Bill Reinhardt, Program Director of KBOO-FM in Portland received a copy. 'Santa' had the strange kind of sonic weirdness he was looking for and it was played heavily on his popular (Radio Lab) show. Bill met The Residents at their Sycamore St. studio in the summer of 1973 with the news of his broadcasts. They were overjoyed that they had finally got media acceptance and he was celebrated with the news that KBOO was the first station to play a Residents record on the air. Inviting him in and treating him like family, The Residents gave Reinhardt exclusive access to all their eclectic recordings, including copies of the original masters of "Stuffed Trigger", ''Baby Sex'' and the ''Warner Bros. Album.'' He promoted these along with ''Meet The Residents'' regularly on his radio program. There was considerable resistance to the commercial viability of Residents material. To aid in their promotion, Bill was given 50 of the first 1000 copies of ''Meet The Residents''. Some were sent to friends, listeners and critics and two dozen were left for sale on consignment at Music Millennium Records where they sat unsold for months. KBOO DJ, Barry Schwam (Schwump, who also recorded with The Residents) promoted them on his program as well. Eventually KBOO airplay attracted many loyal fans and Portland, Oregon became the epicenter of a worldwide cult phenomenon.

The Residents, at this time, were at a rough point in their career. According to official Residents lore, there was internal turmoil which resulted in a large, "embarrassing" food fight; they decided to resolve this tension in 1974 by recording what would later become ''Not Available''—representative of N. Senada's Theory of Obscurity taken to its logical conclusion. The album was recorded and then placed in storage in order to be issued only when everyone had forgotten about it. However, contractual obligations related to the much-delayed release of ''Eskimo'' forced its release in 1978 after the band had almost forgotten about it. The Residents were not bothered by this deviation from their plan since the 1978 decision to release the album would not affect the philosophical conditions under which it was originally recorded.

''The Third Reich 'n' Roll'' came next, a pastiche on 1960s rock and roll with an overarching Nazi theme represented visually on the album cover, which featured Dick Clark in an SS uniform holding a carrot, with a number of Hitlers dancing on clouds behind him. On each side of the record was a single composition, approximately 17½ minutes long, using recordings of classic rock and roll songs that were spliced, overdubbed and edited with new vocals, instrumentation and tape noises. The original songs were finally removed leaving entirely new and bizarre performances. The music video for this album was shot on the sets that were built for ''Vileness Fats''.

Following ''The Third Reich 'n' Roll'' came ''Fingerprince'', a particularly ambitious project not unlike the earlier ''Not Available'' recordings. The band's original intention with ''Fingerprince'' was to release it as the very first "three-sided" album – they had found a way to simulate a third side by arranging the grooves on one side of the vinyl album to play a completely different program of tracks depending on which series of grooves the needle was dropped on. However, this idea was dropped when the band discovered that the Monty Python comedy troupe had executed the very same idea three years earlier with their ''Matching Tie and Handkerchief'' album. The "third side" was later released as an EP entitled ''Babyfingers'', and the ''Babyfingers'' tracks have since been re-integrated into the ''Fingerprince'' album on the CD reissues.

The Residents followed ''Fingerprince'' with their ''Duck Stab/Buster & Glen'' album – their most easily comprehensible album up to that point. This album got the band some attention from the press (namely ''NME'', ''Sounds'' and ''Melody Maker''), and dropped most of their reliance upon the Theory of Obscurity.

''Eskimo'' (1979) contained music consisting of non-musical sounds, percussion, and wordless voices. Rather than being songs in the orthodox sense, the compositions sounded like "live-action stories" without dialogue. The Residents remixed the "songs" in disco style, the results of which appeared on the EP ''Diskomo''. ''Eskimo'' was reissued in surround sound on DVD in 2003. ''Eskimo'''s cover presents the first instance of the group wearing their signature eyeball masks and tuxedos, which would be featured in many subsequent releases, films, live appearances, and promotional materials.

''Commercial Album'' (1980) consisted of 40 songs, each consisting of a verse and a chorus and lasting one minute. The songs pastiched the advertising jingle although the songs were not endorsements of known products or services. The liner notes state that songs should be repeated three times in a row to form a "pop song". The Residents purchased 40 one-minute advertising slots on San Francisco's most popular Top-40 radio station at the time, KFRC, such that the station played each track of their album over three days. This prompted an editorial in ''Billboard'' magazine questioning whether the act was art or advertising.

When MTV was in its infancy, The Residents' videos were in heavy rotation since they were among the few music videos available to broadcasters. The Residents' earliest videos are in the New York Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection and were eventually released together in 2001 on the ''Icky Flix'' DVD, which includes an optional audio track of remixes.

The Mole Show: The start of the live era

In 1981, a trilogy of albums, starting with ''Mark of the Mole'', was to be released. A tour ensued, and was narrated nightly by Penn Jillette. The Mole Trilogy is made up of parts I, II and IV. The performance featured The Residents performing behind a burlap screen, occasionally wearing disguises (such as their iconic eyeball masks), while dancers and actors appeared in front of painted backdrops used to help illustrate the story. Penn Jillette would come out between songs telling long intentionally pointless stories. The show was designed to appear to fall apart as it progressed: Penn pretended to grow angrier with the crowd, and lighting effects and music would become increasingly chaotic, all building up to the point where Penn was dragged off stage and returned, handcuffed to a wheelchair, to deliver his last monologue. During one performance, an audience member assaulted Penn while he was handcuffed to the wheelchair.

The 13th anniversary show

After their Japanese distributor approached them for a two-week run in Japan, The Residents created the 13th Anniversary tour. While the musical performance was more mainstream, the stage show was another over-the-top spectacle, featuring inflatable giraffes, dancers in eye ball masks illuminating the darkened stage with work lights, and a lead vocalist who seemed to change costumes throughout the show from wearing his eyeball mask to wearing a Richard Nixon mask, and at one point wearing only a wig and fake ears. After the two-week run in Japan, the Residents took the show through the US. During the US run of the tour, the band encountered a few problems, having the tour manager fan a members keyboard because of overheating, being booked in a pool hall, and having someone run on stage only to be thrown back into the audience, the tour was still successful however. For the New York run of shows, they ranked 3rd in ticket sales behind Eric Clapton and Jerry Garcia.

Backstage at the Hollywood Palace show on December 26, 1985, one member's eyeball mask (Mr. Red Eye) was stolen, so it was replaced with a giant skull mask. The eye was returned by a devoted fan who discovered where the thief lived and stole it back, although Homer Flynn said the person who returned the mask was most probably the thief. It was put into retirement because they said it was "unclean" and in a bad condition—a superfluous shell. After this, the lead Resident was known as Mr. Skull.

The last show of this tour was in January 1987 at The Warfield in San Francisco, with a special appearance by Penn & Teller.

Cube E

"Cube E" was a three-act performance covering the history of American Music. It was a step up from previous shows, featuring more elaborate dance numbers and sets. It was also the first show composed exclusively of music written for the show. The show was almost entirely backlit, with blacklights highlighting fluorescent pieces of costumes and set.

They introduced the first part, which covered cowboy music, on German television as "Buckaroo Blues". It featured the singer and two dancers wearing giant cowboy hats around a glowing campfire. Part two was called "Black Barry" and focused on slave music and the blues. The act ended when a giant cube head rose from the back of the stage. Part three, "The Baby King," featured Elvis songs performed by an elderly Elvis impersonator for his grandchildren. The show ended with an inflated Elvis dying as a result of the British Invasion.

Wormwood

Based on Bible stories, Wormwood featured the Residents departing from pre-programmed music and again using a live band. The band wore ecclesiastical robes and performed in a brightly lit fluorescent cave. The male and female lead singers switched leads, depending on what characters they needed. Act one consisted of one-off stories about individual Bible characters. Act 2 focused on suites of songs about Bible figures such as Abraham, Moses, and King David. During a performance in Athens, Greece, Nolan Cook, their guitarist, had to leave the stage after taking a rock to the head from an audience member.

In the late 1980s, they created the epic recording ''God in Three Persons'', a story about the exploitation of two Siamese twins with healing powers by a male dominant force and ''The King & Eye'', a surreal biography of Elvis Presley and the birth of rock and roll.

1991–1997: Multimedia era

In the 1990s, they created ''Freak Show''. This marked the beginning of The Residents' obsession with emerging computer technology in the 1990s. Much of the music was made with MIDI devices. ''Freak Show'' also served as the name for a CD-ROM released by the Voyager Company on March 1, 1995, shortly after Laurie Anderson's first multimedia CD-ROM experiment, ''Puppet Motel''. ''Freak Show'' was also a stage performance by a theater company at the Archa Theater in Prague that premiered on November 1, 1995, and a comic book. Several of the songs were also performed live during the 1997 25th anniversary concerts at the Fillmore in San Francisco. After the CD-ROM's success, the album was re-released as ''The Freak Show Soundtrack'' with a different cover. A limited edition, ''The Freak Show Special Edition'', was released in 2002 to mark their 30th anniversary.

1998–2005: Band era

More recently The Residents recorded the dramatic album ''Demons Dance Alone'' (also a tour and DVD in 2002) and ''Animal Lover'' in 2005. Singer Molly Harvey began as a Ralph employee but by the mid-90s contributed to virtually all of The Residents' many projects. The Residents' increased reliance on Harvey—essentially handing her half of the vocal duties since at least ''Demons Dance Alone''—parallels their artistic revitalization. Nolan Cook, Carla Fabrizio, Toby Dammit, Eric Drew Feldman, and many other artists continuously worked with the band over the last five years, recording and performing live. The new artists helped to counter what Allmusic derided as a "sonic palette [confined to] factory presets from their new Macintosh audio" of the CD-ROM era.

In February 2005, The Residents toured Australia as part of the "What is Music?" festival, performing a two hour retrospective set entitled the ''33rd Anniversary Tour: The Way We Were''. These shows saw a fairly minimal band; three eyeball-headed Residents (one on guitar and two laptop/sample operators), a "stage hand" performer, and a male and female vocalist in costumes reminiscent of the Wormwood tour. Video projections and unusual flexible screens were added to the stage set, creating an unsettling ambiance. The performances on the ''Way We Were'' tour were recorded and were released on CD and DVD in 2005.

2006–present: Storyteller era

Summer of 2006 brought the internet download project, River of Crime (Episodes 1–5). River of Crime was their first project with Warner Music Group's Cordless label. Following the success of River of Crime, The Residents launched their weekly Timmy video project on YouTube. In 2007 they did the music for the documentary ''Strange Culture'' and also released a double instrumental album, ''Night of the Hunters''. On the Fourth of July, 2007, the planned October release of their latest project with Mute Records, The Voice of Midnight (a music theater adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann's short story "Der Sandmann"), was announced on their website.

On the May 21 they announced on their website that their first North America tour since Demons Dance Alone for a project entitled The Bunny Boy was set to begin on October 9 in New York – later an earlier date was added for Santa Cruz. Soon, it was announced that the tour would also include Europe, starting November 13. On June 3, the Residents.com website boasted the planned release of ''The Bunny Boy'' which was released on September 1. The website had posted information in which Foxboro claimed this would be a Farewell Tour; it was later revealed that this was nothing more than a mistake by Foxboro.

November 3, 2009 saw three new releases. The Ughs! is a mostly instrumental album made up of music composed earlier in their career, which had been completely reworked for the Voice of Midnight album. Ten Little Piggies is a "futurist compilation", ten songs from projects that may or may not be released in the future. Finally Is Anybody Out There is a DVD collecting all the Bunny Boy videos from the series posted on Youtube. The episodes are streamlined and not exactly the same as the originals.

In January 2010 the Residents began a national tour entitled Talking Light, which featured singer "Randy" wearing an old man mask, and the other two wearing dread lock wigs and some kind of optical gear over their faces. The songs were stories about various characters' obsessions with invisible siblings, fictional serial killers, people in mirrors, among others. One of these performances was featured as part of the edition of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival curated by Matt Groening in May 2010 in Minehead, England.

Identity

Much of the speculation about the members' true identities swirls around their management team, known as "The Cryptic Corporation." Cryptic was formed as a corporation in California by Jay Clem (born 1947), Homer Flynn (born April 1945), Hardy W. Fox (born 1945), and John Kennedy in 1976, all of whom denied having been band members. (Clem and Kennedy left the Corporation in 1982, much to the chagrin of some fans.) The Residents themselves do not grant interviews, though Flynn and Fox have conducted interviews with the media.

Nolan Cook, a prominent collaborator with the group in both their live and studio work (as well as being a live member of I Am Spoonbender), denied in an interview that Fox and Flynn are the Residents, saying that he has come across such rumors, and they are completely false. However, Cook himself is considered a member of the band by some, as he is known to wear the same head coverings as the rest of the group during live shows, even wearing the trademark eyeball mask during the Wormwood tour.

William Poundstone, author of the ''Big Secrets'' books, compared voiceprints of a Flynn lecture with those of spoken word segments from the Residents discography in his book ''Biggest Secrets''. After noting similar patterns in both, he concluded "the similarities in the spectograms second the convincing subjective impression that the voices are identical." He posited that "It is possible that the creative core of the Residents is the duo of Flynn and Fox." A subset of that belief is that Flynn is the lyricist (a conclusion buttressed by the fact that his voice bears an uncanny resemblance to one which appears on many of the Residents' albums) and that Fox writes the music. In addition BMI's online database of the performance rights organization (of which the Residents and their publishing company, Pale Pachyderm Publishing (Warner-Chappell), have been members for their entire careers), lists Flynn and Fox as the composers of all original Residents songs. This includes those songs written pre-1974 (the "Residents Unincorporated" years), the year Cryptic formed.

Cryptic openly admits the group's artwork is done by Flynn (among others), under various names that, put together, become Pornographics, but the pseudonym is rarely spelled the same way twice (examples: Porno Graphics, Pore No Graphix, Pore-Know Graphics); and that Fox is the "sound engineer" — meaning that he is the main producer, engineer, master, and editor of all their recordings. (Since 1976, the Residents' recordings have all listed their producer as "The Cryptic Corporation," presumably meaning Fox in particular.) Many other rumors have come and gone over the years, one being that 60s experimental band Cromagnon shared members with the band.

Discography

Albums

''Meet the Residents'' – 1974

''The Third Reich 'n Roll'' – 1976

''Fingerprince'' – 1977

''Duck Stab/Buster & Glen'' – 1978

''Not Available'' – 1978

''Eskimo'' – 1979

''Commercial Album'' – 1980

''Mark of the Mole'' – 1981

''The Tunes of Two Cities'' – 1982

''Title in Limbo'' with ''Renaldo and the Loaf'' – 1983

''George & James'' – 1984

''Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?'' – 1984

''The Big Bubble: Part Four of the Mole Trilogy'' – 1985

''Census Taker'' – 1985

''Stars & Hank Forever: The American Composers Series'' – 1986

''God in Three Persons'' – 1988

''God in Three Persons Soundtrack'' – 1988

''The King & Eye'' – 1989

''Freak Show'' – 1990

''Our Finest Flowers'' – 1992

''Gingerbread Man'' – 1994

''Hunters'' – 1995

''Have a Bad Day'' – 1996

''Wormwood: Curious Stories from the Bible'' – 1998

''Roosevelt 2.0'' – 2000

''Roadworms: The Berlin Sessions'' – 2000

''Icky Flix'' – 2001

''Demons Dance Alone'' – 2002

''WB: RMX'' – 2003

''12 Days of Brumalia'' – 2004

''I Murdered Mommy'' – 2004

''Animal Lover'' – 2005

''River of Crime (Episodes 1–5)'' – 2006

''Tweedles'' – 2006

''Night of the Hunters'' – 2007

''The Voice of Midnight'' – 2007

''Smell My Picture'' – 2008

''The Bunny Boy'' – 2008

''Postcards From Patmos'' – 2008

''Hades'' – 2009

''The Ughs!'' – 2009

''Arkansas'' – 2009

''Ozan'' – 2010

''Strange Culture/Haeckel's Tale'' – 2010

''Dollar General'' – 2010

''Talking Light Rehearsal'' – 2010

''Lonely Teenager'' – 2011

''Dolor Generar'' – 2011

''Ozark'' – 2011

''GBM(i)'' - Aug 13, 2011

Compilation albums

''The Residents Radio Special'' – 1979

''Please Do Not Steal It!'' – 1979

''Nibbles'' – 1979

''Residue of the Residents'' – 1984

''Ralph Before '84: Volume 1, The Residents'' – 1984

''Assorted Secrets'' – 1984

''Memorial Hits'' – 1985

''The Pal TV LP'' – 1985

''Heaven?'' – 1986

''Hell!'' – 1986

''Stranger Than Supper'' – 1990

''Liver Music'' – 1990

''Daydream B-Liver'' – 1991

''Poor Kaw-Liga's Pain'' – 1994

''Louisiana's Lick'' – 1995

''Our Tired, Our Poor, Our Huddled Masses'' – 1997

''Residue Deux'' – 1998

''25 Years of Eyeball Excellence'' – 1998

''Land of Mystery'' – 1999

''Refused'' – 1999

''Dot Com'' – 2000

''Diskomo 2000'' – 2000

''Petting Zoo'' – 2002

''Eat Exuding Oinks'' – 2002

''Best Left Unspoken...Vol. 1'' – 2006

''Best Left Unspoken...Vol. 2'' – 2006

''Best Left Unspoken...Vol. 3'' – 2007

''Ten Little Piggies'' – 2009

''Chicken Scratching With The Residents'' – 2010

Live albums

''The Mole Show Live at the Roxy'' – 1983

''The 13th Anniversary Show Live in the U.S.A.'' – 1986

''13th Anniversary Show: Live in Japan'' – 1986

''The Thirteenth Anniversary Show'' – 1987

''The Mole Show Live in Holland'' – 1989

''Cube E: Live in Holland'' – 1990

''Live at the Fillmore'' – 1998

''Wormwood Live'' – 1999

''Kettles of Fish on the Outskirts of Town'' – 2002

''The Way We Were'' (live CD/DVD) – 2005

''Cube E Box Set'' – 2006

''Talking Light'' – 2010

Singles and EPs

''Santa Dog'' – 1972

''Satisfaction'' – 1976

''The Beatles Play the Residents and the Residents Play the Beatles'' – 1977

''Santa Dog '78'' – 1978

''Babyfingers'' – 1979

''Diskomo'' – 1980

''The Commercial Single'' – 1980

''Intermission: Extraneous Music from the Residents' Mole Show'' – 1983

''Safety is the Cootie Wootie'' – 1984

''It's a Man's Man's Man's World'' – 1984

''Kaw-Liga'' – 1986

''Earth vs. the Flying Saucers'' – 1986

''It's a Man's Man's Man's World'' (Australia) – 1986

''Hit the Road Jack'' – 1987

''For Elsie'' – 1987

''Snakey Wake'' – 1987

''Buckaroo Blues'' – 1988

''Santa Dog 88'' – 1988

''Double Shot'' – 1988

''Holy Kiss of Flesh'' – 1988

''From the Plains to Mexico'' – 1989

''Don't Be Cruel'' – 1989

''Blowoff'' – 1992

''Santa Dog '92'' – 1992

''Prelude to "The Teds"'' – 1993

''Pollex Christi'' – 1997

''I Hate Heaven'' – 1998

''In Between Screams'' – 1999

''High Horses'' – 2001

''The Sandman Waits'' – 2007

''Anganok'' – 2009

Multimedia projects

''Vileness Fats'' (unfinished film project) – 1972–1976

''The Mole Show/Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?'' (VHS) –1984

''Freak Show'' (CD-ROM) – 1991

''The Eyes Scream: A History of the Residents'' (VHS) (with host Penn Jillette) – 1991

''Twenty Twisted Questions'' (Laserdisc) – 1992

''Gingerbread Man'' (CD-ROM) – 1994

''Bad Day on the Midway'' (CD-ROM) – 1995

''Icky Flix'' (DVD) – 2001

''Eskimo'' (DVD) – 2002

''Disfigured Night DVD'' (DVD) – 2002

''Live! On The Outskirts'' (DVD) – 2002

''Demons Dance Alone'' (DVD) – 2003

''The Commercial DVD'' (DVD) – 2004

''Wormwood: Curious Stories from the Bible'' (DVD) – 2005

''The Way We Were'' (CD/DVD) – 2005

''Cube E Box'' (CD/DVD) – 2006

''The River of Crime'' (podcast) – 2006

''Timmy'' (Internet video series) – 2006

''The Bunny Boy'' (Internet video series) – 2008

''Icky Flix Live'' (DVD) – 2009

''The Mole Show (Kabuki)'' (CD/DVD) – 2009

''Is Anybody Out There?'' (DVD) – 2009

''Randy's Ghost Stories'' – 2011

References

Further reading

''Meet the Residents – America's most eccentric band!'', Ian Shirley, SAF Publishing, Wembley, UK, 1998 ISBN 0 946719 12 8

Category:American artist groups and collectives Category:American experimental musical groups Category:Musical groups from California Category:Music of the San Francisco Bay Area Category:Outsider music Category:Pranksters Category:Bands with fictional stage personas Category:Cordless Recordings artists Category:American progressive rock music groups Category:Mute Records artists

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External links

The Residents Official Historical Site

Official MySpace page

Official YouTube page

Residents Lovers Forum

The Moles present The Residents

ca:The Residents cs:The Residents da:The Residents de:The Residents es:The Residents fa:رزیدنتز (گروه) fr:The Residents it:The Residents lb:The Residents lt:The Residents nl:The Residents ja:レジデンツ no:The Residents pl:The Residents pt:The Residents ru:The Residents fi:The Residents uk:The Residents