In its early days, some MO disks were proprietary. Nowadays both the 3.5in and 5.25in disk types are governed by ISO standards and any compliant disk will work in any MO drive – providing the drive is compatible with that capacity. Some of the would-be floppy replacement technologies offer backwards compatibility with the 3.5in floppy disk – but their higher capacity disks are proprietary.
When it comes to compatibility, no removable storage format can seriously rival the CD/DVD family of products:
| Media | Drives | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CD-ROM | CD-RW | DVD-ROM | DVD-R | DVD-RAM | DVD+RW | |
| CD-ROM | R | R | R | R | R | R |
| CD-R | R | W/R | R | R | R | W/R |
| CD-RW | R | W/R | R | R | R | W/R |
| DVD-ROM | R | R | R | R | ||
| DVD-R | R | W/R | W/R | R | ||
| DVD+R | W/R | |||||
| DVD-RAM | W/R | |||||
| DVD+RW | W/R | |||||
- Floppy Disk Data Storage
- Optical drives – WORM Write Once Read Many technology
- Magnetic Disk Technology
- Magneto-optical drives – MO technology
- LIMDOW Data Storage
- MO Media
- OSD Data Storage Technology
- Florescent Disc Technology
- Phase Change Technology
- Floppy Disc Replacements
- Super Floppies
- Hard Disk Compliment
- Tape Storage Compatibility
- Holographic Data Storage