Introduced in 1983, the MSD Super Disk drives were the first third-party devices designed for compatibility with the Commodore 64, although other manufacturers soon followed suit.

For instance, a typical mail-order advertisement in the January 1985 issue of RUN Magazine[5] lists the MSD SD-1 single drive at $249.95, compared to $199.95 for the Commodore 1541.

It is still unable to read and write an entire track of data (over 7kB) in a single rotation of the media, which would be optimal.

However, the MSD Super Disk drives have difficulty loading most copy-protected software, due to substantial differences in the DOS code, memory mapping and the microcontroller used.

The time savings alone, when backing up disk files, will rapidly pay for the machine", and also a good replacement for the CBM 4040.