What was the highest number of floppy disks ever used for a product?

Question

Something I got to thinking of while sorting out a pile of driver floppies for windpws XP & 2003...

Of all the software products ever released, what came on the highest number of floppy disks? Windows 95 used 13, but I doubt that was the upper limit as things moved towards dual-release on floppy and CD before becoming CD only.

I thought '95 was > 13... I remember sitting there for the best part of a day swapping them out — Mark Henderson, Oct 07 '09 at 03:10
funny, i just threw out an old Win95 retail box full of the original floppies... — quack quixote, Oct 07 '09 at 05:01

score 20 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:33

20

I don't know if it was publicly released, but I remember that when I was with one customer who had a very old (but powerful) machine and were licence customers of Microsoft, they requested XP on disk and it was delivered on around 250+ floppys

answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:33

William Hilsum

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Whatt? Seriously? XP on floppies? Well, that's somehow cool... – Bobby Oct 07 '09 at 09:03
I am sure I still have it somewhere, (I never throw computer related stuff away!)... I will try to go to the attic and find it a bit later – William Hilsum Oct 07 '09 at 11:18
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that must have sucked when you found disk 249 was bad. – Keltari Jan 13 '14 at 20:00
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I wanna see pics! – MDT Guy Jan 13 '14 at 20:08
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Imagine spending payroll on someone installing an OS from 250 floppies rather than just buying a CD-ROM drive. – db2 Jul 18 '19 at 13:48

pelms · Answer 2 · 2010-08-24T00:19:38.843

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MS Office 97 Professional came on ~~45 floppies~~ 55 floppies (97 Standard came on 45).

edited Aug 24 '10 at 00:19

answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:26

pelms

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I have a copy of MS Office 4.3 from back before cd's existed, and that was 43 floppies. – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun Aug 23 '10 at 12:12

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 07 '09 at 03:55

5

OS/2 Warp v3 was 25 (39 if you include the bonus pack) - and i know because i just dusted it off and counted :) now can i find a working floppy drive?

answered Oct 07 '09 at 03:55

Zypher

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Thanks for doing that so I didn't have to go count :D – adric Oct 07 '09 at 04:04
I have a totally working USB floppy drive in my office desk drawer, and you'd be amazed by no *litte* use it sees these days! :) But still, every so often, I need to install Win XP x64 for instance, and suddenly I have to pop a driver in there.. :) – tplive Oct 07 '09 at 05:58
..and by "no *litte* use" I actually mean "how *little* use"... PEBKAC problem..:) – tplive Oct 07 '09 at 06:22

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:38

2

I still have the disks for Microsoft C++ 7.0 here in my drawer. There are 16 of them.

answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:38

fretje

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score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:56

2

Slackware Linux came on 33 disks.

answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:56

Mark Harrison

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 07 '09 at 05:25

1

I recall hearing that MS SQL Server was quite a few disks (I want to say around 40), but can't find the exact number anywhere...

answered Oct 07 '09 at 05:25

Jimmy

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score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:17

1

MS Office Pro, 40+ disks, as far as I can remember...

answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:17

Daniel Mošmondor

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score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:31

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How about for games? Monkey Island 2 came on 11 disks for the Amiga - and hard drives weren't that common!

answered Oct 07 '09 at 07:31

therefromhere

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That was double density floppies though, not HD ones. Not sure if they would only count half :] But yes, good times swapping disks! I managed to finish the thing on a floppy only machine. – cc0 Jan 05 '11 at 07:19

score 0 · Answer 9 · edited Feb 09 '11 at 03:44

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I remember Lotus SmartSuite used 23...

edited Feb 09 '11 at 03:44

yhw42

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answered Oct 07 '09 at 03:07

squillman

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score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 07 '09 at 05:42

0

i remember that Borland C++ was on 15 disks

answered Oct 07 '09 at 05:42

Remus Rigo

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What was the highest number of floppy disks ever used for a product?

10 Answers10