LOCAL supplies of floppy disks will be safe for the foreseeable future. This is despite one of the UK’s largest computer dealers dropping its stock last week.

PC World announced that it is no longer replenishing its supply of the data storage.

Industry experts have branded the move the nail in the coffin for floppy disks which, with a capacity of 1.44mb, are no longer adequate for most computing requirements.

But Guernsey Computers and NSEW said there was still a demand and so long as that continued, they would continue restocking.

The former no longer sells computers fitted with floppy drives, but NSEW still installs them on its home-built machines when requested.

Marketing manager Andy Fothergill said its computers could be built to a range of specifications and some customers still requested floppy drives and disks were still being sold.

‘We would not be so presumptuous as to stop selling a product that was still in demand.’

Guernsey Computers managing director David Harland said it was a depleted market.

‘We received a new batch of stock this week but sales are diminishing rapidly. So far this year, sales have been in the tens rather than the hundreds. Floppy disks are not completely dead yet but they are certainly on the way out.’

PC World claimed that 98% of computers it sells no longer have floppy disk drives and by summer that is expected to reach 100%.

The first floppy disks were made by IBM in 1971 and were eight inches in size. The five-and-a-half inch drives and later disks became much more common.

PC World commercial director Bryan Magrath said: ‘The floppy disk looks increasingly quaint and simply isn’t able to compete.’

Mr Harland said memory sticks, CDs and DVDs had taken over.

Mr Fothergill said NSEW would still fit floppy disk drives to computers as long as there was demand, but the fact that DVD-writer drives could be installed for a little as £34 was ruling them out.