3 Forms Of Floppy Disk Drives

3 Forms Of Floppy Disk Drives

By:


Some time ago, floppy disk drives were a common part of computers. These drives read and also wrote information on floppy hard disks. Floppy disks, usually nicely set up in their floppy disk holders, were used as removable data storage systems. The different types of floppy disk drives have names which represent the size of the floppy disk which they could utilize.

5 ¼ Floppy Disk Drive

During the 1980s and early 90s, computer systems had 5 ¼ floppy disk drives to read and write data on 5 ¼ inch floppy disks. Upon placing the floppy disk into the disk drive, a lever located on the front of the drive closed the disk in place. To take out the disk, you simply had to turn the lever and pull the disk away. Data volume saved on this floppy disk ranged from 360 kilobytes up to 1.2 mb. Floppy disk suppliers started out making double-sided disks so that they can keep data on both sides.

3 ½ Floppy Disk Drive

A three ½ floppy disk drive use a magnetic sheathed floppy disk that is 3 ½ inches. At the bottom of these diskettes are 2 holes, one is utilized to identify low density or high density capability, and the other is utilized as a write-protect tab. This specific tab keeps the information in the disk safe from being deleted or changed. Simply slip the switch down to make the disk read only, and slide it back up so you can read and put information to the diskette. These kinds of diskettes are used by inserting them into the disk drives, and also pushing the eject button to pull them out. The disk drive could read and write data on the three ½ inch floppy disk and could keep approximately 730 Kilobytes of data on the double density disk. The high-density floppy disk could also store around 1.44 megabytes of information. Older computers, however, had to use many disks for some applications to be set up. Floppy disks utilized in this drive were spun three hundred rotations every minute to allow eighty tracks to be arranged on the disks. Each single track is divided into eighteen sectors, that have a capability of nearly 512 bytes each. Their development also made utilizing each side of the disk possible for saving files.

Zip Drive

Iomega Corporation unveiled the zip drive during the middle of 90s. A single zip disk could store 100 MB, 250 MB or even 750 MB of information. Their primary use was as a peripheral to present systems. For a time, they were renowned as a storage space device; nevertheless, they started to decline in popularity due to their high price tags as well as limited use.

Floppy disk drives can hardly be found these days since they have already been replaced by other drives, such as CD and DVD drives, USB flash drives, and even drives for memory cards.


About the Author:
Written by Patricia Strasser. If you wish to find out more on floppy disk holders, go to http://www.everydayplastics.com/FloppyDiskHolders.php



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


|

Loading...
Related....
Videos...

Recent News-and-Society Articles

Comments

Still can't find what you are looking for? Search for it!

Loading

Copyright 2005-2011 ArticleSnatch, LLC - All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy | Terms of Service.