Floppy Disk Drive
8-inch, 5¼-inch (full height), and 3½-inch drives
Date Invented:	1969 (8-inch), 1976 (5¼-inch), 1984 (3½-inch)
Invented By:	IBM team led by David Noble
Connects to: Controller via cable

A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible ("floppy") magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. Magnetic storage and magnetic recording are terms from Engineering referring to the storage of Data on a Magnetized medium Classification A square (regular Quadrilateral) is a special case of a Rectangle as it has four right angles and equal parallel sides In Geometry, a rectangle is defined as a Quadrilateral where all four of its angles are Right angles A rectangle with vertices ABCD would be denoted as Plastic is the general common term for a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic organic solid materials suitable for the manufacture of industrial products Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive or FDD, the initials of which should not be confused with "fixed disk drive", which is another term for a hard disk drive. A hard disk drive ( HDD) commonly referred to as a hard drive, hard disk, or fixed disk drive, is a Non-volatile storage device Invented by IBM, floppy disks in 8-inch (200 mm), 5¼-inch (133⅓ mm), and the newest and most common 3½-inch (90 mm) formats enjoyed many years as a popular and ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange, from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. The metre or meter is a unit of Length. It is the basic unit of Length in the Metric system and in the International This article is about the Decade 1970-1979 For the Year 1970 see 1970. The 1990s collectively refers to the years between and including 1990 and 1999 However, they have now been largely superseded by flash and optical storage devices while e-mail has become the preferred method of exchanging small to medium size digital files. Flash memory is non-volatile computer memory that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed Optical storage is a term from Engineering referring to the storage of data on an optically readable medium Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving

Recent usage

The flexible magnetic disk, or diskette (-ette is a diminutive suffix), revolutionized computer disk storage in the 1970s. A diminutive is a formation of a Word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning smallness of the object or quality named encapsulation intimacy or endearment In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word Diskettes, which were often called floppy disks or floppies by English speaking users, became ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s in their use with personal computers and home computers, such as the Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore 64, Atari ST, and Amiga, to distribute software, transfer data, and create backups. A personal computer ( PC) is any Computer whose original sales price size and capabilities make it useful for individuals and which is intended to be operated A home computer was a class of Personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc The Atari ST is a home / Personal computer that was commercially available from 1985 to the early 1990s The Amiga is a family of Personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. In Information technology, backup refers to making copies of Data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a

Before hard disks became affordable, floppy disks were often also used to store a computer's operating system (OS), in addition to application software and data. An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination Application software is a subclass of Computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly and thoroughly to a task that the user wishes to perform Most home computers had a primary OS (often BASIC) stored permanently in on-board ROM, with the option of loading a more advanced disk operating system from a floppy, whether it be a proprietary system, CP/M, or later, DOS. In Computer programming, BASIC (an Acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of High-level programming languages CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers is an Operating system originally created for Intel 8080 / 85 based Microcomputers by Gary Kildall DOS, short for "Disk Operating System" is a shorthand term for several closely related Operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market

By the early 1990s, the increasing size of software meant that many programs demanded multiple diskettes, a large package like Windows or Adobe Photoshop could use a dozen disks or more. Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Toward the end of the 1990s, distribution of larger packages therefore gradually switched to CD-ROM (or online distribution for smaller programs). CD-ROM (an initialism of "Compact Disc Read-Only Memory " is a pre-pressed Compact Disc that contains data accessible to but not writable

Mechanically incompatible higher-density formats were introduced (e. g. the Iomega Zip disk) and were popular for a while, but with the arrival of low priced broadband Internet access and flash devices, the whole floppy technology was now largely redundant. The Iomega Corporation is a supplier of portable Computer storage devices network storage and media The Zip drive is a medium-capacity removable Disk storage system introduced by Iomega in late 1994 The term broadband can have different meanings in different contexts The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks Flash memory is non-volatile computer memory that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed Professional backups had since long been made to various types of tape drives, with the compact disc being increasingly popular, often employed for personal computer backups as well. Magnetic tape has been used for Data storage for over 50 years A Compact Disc (also known as a CD) is an Optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio

An attempt to continue the traditional diskette was the SuperDisk (LS-120) in the late 1990s, with a capacity of 120 MB (actually 120. Also known as the LS-120 and the later variant LS-240, the SuperDisk was introduced by 3M 's storage products group (later known as Imation A megabyte is a unit of Information or Computer storage equal to either 106 (1000000 Bytes or 220 (1048576 bytes depending on 375 MiB^[1]), which was backward compatible with standard 3½-inch floppies. A mebibyte (a contraction of me ga bi nary byte) is a unit of Information or Computer storage, abbreviated MiB. For some time, PC manufacturers were reluctant to remove the floppy drive because many IT departments appreciated a built-in file transfer mechanism that always worked and required no device driver to operate properly. Information technology ( IT) as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA is "the study design development implementation support In computing a device driver or software driver is a Computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a Hardware device However, manufacturers and retailers have progressively reduced the availability of computers fitted with floppy drives and of the disks themselves.

External USB-based floppy disk drives are available for computers without floppy drives, and they work on any machine that supports USB Mass Storage Devices. Many modern systems even provide firmware support for booting to a USB-mounted floppy drive.

It should be noted that Windows XP still requires the use of floppy drives to install third-party RAID, SATA and AHCI hard drives. This requirement was only dropped with the introduction of Windows Vista in 2007. To this day (June, 2008), most PC motherboards will still attempt to boot from a floppy drive, depending on CMOS settings.

Disk formats

Floppy disk sizes are almost universally referred to in imperial measurements, even in countries where metric is the standard, and even when the size is in fact defined in metric (for instance the 3½-inch floppy, which is actually 90 mm). Imperial units or the Imperial system is a collection of units first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824 Formatted capacities are generally set in terms of binary kilobytes (as 1 sector is generally 512 bytes). For more information see below.

History

Origins, the 8-inch disk

See also: Table of 8-inch floppy formats

Drawings from IBM Floppy Disk Drive Patents

In 1967, IBM gave their San Jose, California storage development center a task to develop a simple and inexpensive system for loading microcode into their System/370 mainframes. This is a table of 8-inch Floppy diskette formats as introduced by IBM and DEC: International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology Microprogramming (ie writing microcode) is a method that can be employed to implement Machine instructions in a CPU relatively easily often using less The IBM System/370 (often S/370) was a model range of IBM mainframes announced on June 30, 1970 IBM mainframes, though perceived as synonymous with Mainframe computers in general due to their marketshare are now technically and specifically IBM 's line of business The 370 was the first IBM computer to use read/write semiconductor memory for microcode, and whenever the power was turned off the microcode had to be reloaded (System/370's predecessor, System/360, used non-volatile read-only memory for microcode). The IBM System/360 ( S/360) is a Mainframe computer system family announced by IBM on April 7, 1964. Normally this task would be done with tape drives which almost all 370 systems included, but tapes were large and slow. A tape drive, which is also known as a streamer, is a data storage device that reads and writes data stored on a magnetic tape. IBM wanted something faster and lighter that could also be sent out to customers with software updates for $5.

IBM Direct Access Storage Product Manager Alan Shugart assigned the job to David Noble, who tried to develop a new-style tape for the purpose, but without success. Alan Field Shugart ( September 27, 1930  &ndash December 12, 2006) was a leading computer engineer working in the Disk drive industry Noble's team developed a read-only, 8-inch diameter flexible diskette they called the "memory disk", holding 80 kilobytes. A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix Kilo -, meaning 1000 is a unit of Information or Computer storage equal to either 1024 The original disk was bare, but dirt became a serious problem so they enclosed it in a plastic envelope lined with fabric that would remove dust particles. IBM introduced the diskette commercially in 1971 [3].

The new device,^[11] developed under the code name Minnow and shipped as the 23FD, was a standard part of System 370 processing units. It also was used as a program load device for other IBM products such as the 2835 Storage Control Unit. ^[12]

Alan Shugart left IBM and moved to Memorex where his team in 1972 shipped Memorex 650, the first read-write floppy disk drive. Established in 1961 in Silicon Valley, Memorex is today a Consumer electronics brand of Imation specializing in disk Recordable media (CD & DVD Read-write memory is a type of Computer memory that may be relatively easily written to as well as read from The 650 had a data capacity of 175 kB, with 50 tracks, 8 sectors per track, and 448 bytes per sector. The Memorex disk was "hard-sectored", that is, it contained 8 sector holes (plus one index hole) at the outer diameter (outside data track 00) to synchronize the beginning of each data sector and the beginning of a track.

In 1973 IBM shipped its first read/write floppy disk drive as a part of the 3740 Data Entry System. The new system used a different recording format that stored up to 250¼ kB on the same disks. Drives supporting this format were offered by a number of manufacturers and soon became common for moving smaller amounts of data. This disk format became known as the Single Sided Single Density or SSSD format. It was designed to hold just as much data as one box of punch cards. The disk was divided into 77 tracks of 26 sectors, each holding 128 bytes. Note that 77 × 26 = 2002 sectors, whereas a box of punch cards held 2000 cards.

8-inch disk drive with diskette (3½" disk for comparison)

When the first microcomputers were being developed in the 1970s, the 8-inch floppy found a place on them as one of the few "high speed, mass storage" devices that were even remotely affordable to the target market (individuals and small businesses). microcomputer is a Computer with a Microprocessor as its Central processing unit. The first microcomputer operating system, CP/M, originally shipped on 8-inch disks. CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers is an Operating system originally created for Intel 8080 / 85 based Microcomputers by Gary Kildall However, the drives were still expensive, typically costing more than the computer they were attached to in early days, so most machines of the era used cassette tape instead. The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a Magnetic tape sound

Also in 1973, Shugart founded Shugart Associates which went on to become the dominant manufacturer of 8-inch FDD's. Shugart Associates was a Computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the Floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the minifloppy Its SA800 became the industry standard for form factor and interface.

Burroughs Corporation, meanwhile, was developing a high-performance dual-sided 8-inch drive at their Glenrothes, Scotland factory. With a capacity of 1 MB (2²⁰ B), this unit exceeded IBM's SSSD drive capacity by 4 times, and was able to provide enough space to run all the software and store data on the new Burrough's B80 data entry system, which incidentally had the first VLSI disk controller in the industry. The dual-sided 1 MB floppy entered production in 1975, but was plagued by an industry problem, poor media quality.

There were few tools available to test media for 'bit-shift' on the inner tracks, which made for high error rates, and the result was a substantial investment by Burroughs in a media tester designed by Dr Nigel Mackintosh (who later made important contributions to the science of disk drive testing using Phase Margin Analysis) that they then gave to media makers as a quality control tool, leading to a vast improvement in yields. This began to change with the acceptance of the first standard for the floppy disk, ECMA-54, authored by Jim O'Reilly of Burroughs, Helmuth Hack of BASF and others. Ecma International (Ecma is an international private (membership-based non-profit Standards organization for information and communication systems The Burroughs Corporation began in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company in St BASF SE () is a German chemical company and the largest chemical company in the world O'Reilly set a record for maneuvering this document through ECMA's approval process, with the standards sub-committee being formed in one meeting of ECMA, and approval of a draft standard in the next meeting three months later. This standard later formed the basis for the ANSI standard too. Standardization brought together a variety of competitors to make media to a single interchangeable standard, and allowed rapid quality and cost improvement.

In 1976 IBM introduced the 500 KB Double Sided Single Density (DSSD) format, and in 1977 IBM introduced the 1-1. 2 MB Double Sided Double Density (DSDD) Format. ^[13]

The 5¼-inch minifloppy

A double-density 5¼-inch disk with a partly exposed magnetic medium spun about a central hub. The cover has a cloth liner to brush dust from the medium. Note the “write-enable slot” to the upper right and the strobe hole next to the hub that regulates drive speed.

In 1976 two of Shugart Associates’s employees, Jim Adkisson and Don Massaro, were approached by An Wang of Wang Laboratories, who felt that the 8-inch format was simply too large for the desktop word processing machines he was developing at the time. Shugart Associates was a Computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the Floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the minifloppy Dr An Wang ( February 7, 1920 &ndash March 24, 1990) was a Chinese American computer engineer and inventor and co-founder of computer Wang Laboratories was a computer company founded in 1951 by Dr Word processing is the creation of documents using a Word processor. After meeting in a bar in Boston, Adkisson asked Wang what size he thought the disks should be, and Wang pointed to a napkin and said “about that size”. Adkisson and Massaro took the napkin back to California, found it to be 5¼-inches wide, and developed a new drive of this size storing 98. 5 KB later increased to 110 KB by adding 5 tracks. ^[14][15] The 5¼-inch drive was considerably less expensive than 8-inch drives from IBM, and soon started appearing on CP/M machines. At one point Shugart was producing 4,000 drives a day. By 1978 there were more than 10 manufacturers producing 5¼-inch floppy drives, in competing physical disk formats: hard-sectored (90 KB) and soft-sectored (110 KB). The 5¼-inch formats quickly displaced the 8-inch for most applications, and the 5¼-inch hard-sectored disk format eventually disappeared.

These early drives read only one side of the disk, leading to the popular budget approach of cutting a second write-enable slot and index hole into the carrier envelope and flipping it over (thus, the “flippy disk”) to use the other side for additional storage. A flippy disk (sometimes known as a "flippy" is a double-sided 5¼" Floppy disk, specially modified so that the two sides can be used independently (but not simultaneously This was considered risky by some, the reasoning being that when flipped the disk would spin in the opposite direction inside its cover, so some of the dirt that had been collected by the fabric lining in the previous rotations would be picked up by the disk and dragged past the read/write head. In reality, since some single-head floppy drives had their read/write heads on the bottom and some had them on the top, disk manufacturers routinely certified both sides of disks for use, thus the method was perfectly safe.

Floppy disk write protect tabs. These sticky paper or foil tabs are folded over the notch in the side of a 5¼-inch disk to prevent the computer from writing data to the disk. Later disks, such as the 3½-inch disk, had a built-in slideable plastic tab to implement write-protection.

Tandon introduced a double-sided drive in 1978, doubling the capacity, and a new “double density” format increased it again, to 360 KB. ^[16]

For most of the 1970s and 1980s the floppy drive was the primary storage device for word processors and microcomputers. microcomputer is a Computer with a Microprocessor as its Central processing unit. Since these machines had no hard drive, the OS was usually booted from one floppy disk, which was then removed and replaced by another one containing the application. Some machines using two disk drives (or one dual drive) allowed the user to leave the OS disk in place and simply change the application disks as needed, or to copy data from one floppy to another. In the early 1980s, “quad density” 96-track-per-inch drives appeared, increasing the capacity to 720 KB. Another proprietary format was used by Digital Equipment Corporation's Rainbow-100, DECmate-II and Pro-350. Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the Computer industry The Rainbow 100 was a Microcomputer introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC in 1982 to compete in the IBM PC market DECmate was the name of a series of PDP-8 -compatible computers produced by the Digital Equipment Corporation in the early 1980s The Professional 325 ( PRO-325) Professional 350 ( PRO-350) were PDP-11 compatible Microcomputers introduced in 1982 by It held 400 KB^[17] on a single side by using 96 tracks per inch and cramming 10 sectors per track.

White 5. 25-inch floppy disk.

Despite the available capacity of the disks, support on the most popular operating system of the early 80s—PC-DOS and MS-DOS—lagged slightly behind. IBM PC-DOS is a DOS operating system for the IBM Personal Computer, sold throughout the 1980s and 1990s MS-DOS (short for M icro' s' oft D isk O perating S ystem is an Operating system commercialized by Microsoft. In fact, the original IBM PC did not include a floppy drive at all as standard equipment—you could either buy the optional 5¼-inch floppy drive or rely upon the cassette port. With version 1. 0 of DOS (1981) only single sided 160 KB floppies were supported. Version 1. 1 the next year saw support expand to double-sided, 320 KB disks. Finally in 1983 DOS 2. 0 supported 9 sectors per track rather than 8, providing 180 KB on a (formatted) single-sided disk and 360 KB on a double-sided. ^[18] Along with this change came support for different directories on the disk (now commonly called folders), which came in handy when organizing the greater number of files possible in this increased space.

In 1984, along with the IBM PC/AT, the high density disk appeared, which used 96 tracks per inch combined with a higher density magnetic media to provide 1,200 KB^[19] of storage (formally referred to as 1. The IBM Personal Computer/AT, more commonly known as the IBM AT and also sometimes called the PC AT or PC/AT, was IBM 's second-generation 2 megabytes). Since the usual (very expensive) hard disk held 10–20 megabytes at the time, this was considered quite spacious. A hard disk drive ( HDD) commonly referred to as a hard drive, hard disk, or fixed disk drive, is a Non-volatile storage device High-density drives could also read and write to double-density disks, allowing an easy upgrade path.

Except for labelling, 5¼-inch high-density disks were externally identical to their double-density counterparts. This led to an odd situation wherein the drive itself was unable to determine the density of the disk inserted except by reading the disk media to determine the format. It was therefore possible to use a high-density drive to format a double-density disk to the higher capacity. This usually appeared to work (sometimes reporting a small number of bad sectors) — at least for a time. The problem was that the high-density format was made possible by the creation of a new low-coercivity oxide coating (after soft-sector formatting became standard, previous increases in density were largely enabled by improvements in head technology; up until that point, the media formulation had essentially remained the same since 1976). In Materials science, the coercivity, also called the coercive field, of a ferromagnetic material is the intensity of the applied Magnetic In order to format or write to this low-coercivity media, the high-density drive switched its heads into a mode using a stronger magnetic field. When these stronger fields were written onto a double-density disk (having higher coercivity media), the strongly magnetized oxide particles would begin to affect the magnetic charge of adjacent particles. The net effect is that the disk would literally begin to erase itself. On the other hand, the opposite procedure (attempting to format an HD disk as DD) would fail almost every time, as the low-coercivity media would not retain data written by the low-power DD field. High-density 3½-inch disks avoided this problem by the addition of a hole in the disk cartridge so that the drive could determine the appropriate density.

By the end of the 1980s, the 5¼-inch disks had been superseded by the 3½-inch disks. Though 5¼-inch drives were still available, as were disks, they faded in popularity as the 1990s began. The main community of users was primarily those who still owned '80s legacy machines (PCs running MS-DOS or home computers) that had no 3½-inch drive; the advent of Windows 95 (not even sold in stores in a 5¼-inch version; a coupon had to be obtained and mailed in) and subsequent phaseout of standalone MS-DOS with version 6. MS-DOS (short for M icro' s' oft D isk O perating S ystem is an Operating system commercialized by Microsoft. A home computer was a class of Personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented Graphical user interface -based Operating system. 22 forced many of them to upgrade their hardware. On most new computers the 5¼-inch drives were optional equipment. By the mid-1990s the drives had virtually disappeared as the 3½-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk.

The "Twiggy" disk

During the development of the Apple Lisa, Apple developed a disk format codenamed Twiggy, and officially known as FileWare. For the MOS 6502 assembler for Apple II computers see Lisa assembler. FileWare floppy disk drives and diskettes were designed by Apple Computer as a higher performance alternative to the Disk II and Disk III floppy systems While basically similar to a standard 5¼-inch disk, the Twiggy disk had an additional set of write windows on the top of the disk with the label running down the side. The drive was also present in prototypes of the original Apple Macintosh computer, but was removed in both the Mac and later versions of the Lisa in favor of the 3½-inch floppy disk from Sony. Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc The drives were notoriously unreliable and Apple was criticized for needlessly diverging from industry standards. ^[20]

New 3–3½-inch formats

3-inch Quick Disk packaged as Nintendo Famicom Disk

A Smith Corona DataDisk 2. The was released on February 21, 1986 by Nintendo as a peripheral for the Family Computer ("Famicom" console in Japan. Smith Corona or the SCM Corporation is a US Typewriter and Calculator company. 8-inch.

A 3. 25-inch floppy disk.

De facto standard 3½-inch disk derived from Sony's design.

Close-up of 3½-inch disk

Standard 3½ with a blank label

The basic internal components:
1. Write-protect tab
2. Hub
3. Shutter
4. Plastic housing
5. Paper ring
6. Magnetic disk
7. Disk sector.

Throughout the early 1980s the limitations of the 5¼-inch format were starting to become clear. Originally designed to be smaller and more practical than the 8-inch format, the 5¼-inch system was itself too large, and as the quality of the recording media grew, the same amount of data could be placed on a smaller surface. Another problem was that the 5¼-inch disks were simply scaled down versions of the 8-inch disks, which had never really been engineered for ease of use. The thin folded-plastic shell allowed the disk to be easily damaged through bending, and allowed dirt to get onto the disk surface through the opening.

A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2-inch, 2½-inch, 3-inch and 3½-inch (50, 60, 75 and 90 mm) all being offered by various companies. They all shared a number of advantages over the older format, including a small form factor and a rigid case with a slideable write protect catch. Write protection is any physical mechanism that prevents modification or erasure of valuable Data on a device The almost-universal use of the 5¼-inch format made it very difficult for any of these new formats to gain any significant market share.

Some of these formats included the 3-inch BRG MCD-1 developed in 1973 by Marcell Jánosi, a Hungarian inventor of Budapest Radiotechnic Company (Budapesti Rádiótechnikai Gyár - BRG). ^[21], the AmDisk-3 Micro-Floppy-disk cartridge system in December 1982, ^[22][23], Mitsumi's Quick Disk 3-inch floppies, Dysan and Shugart's 3. A floppy disk is an increasingly Obsolete data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin flexible ("floppy" Magnetic storage medium encased 25-inch floppy disk, and the now-ubiquitous Sony 3. 5" disk.

Sony introduced their own small-format 90. is a multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato Tokyo, Japan, and one of the world's largest Media conglomerates with 0 mm × 94. 0 mm disk, similar to the others but somewhat simpler in construction than the AmDisk. The first computer to use this format was Sony's SMC 70^[24] of 1982. Other than Hewlett-Packard's HP-150 of 1983 and Sony's MSX computers that year, this format suffered from a similar fate as the other new formats; the 5¼-inch format simply had too much market share. Things changed dramatically when several companies started adopting the format. In 1984 Apple Computer selected the format for their new Macintosh computers, in 1985 Atari for their new ST line and Commodore for their new Amiga. Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. The Atari ST is a home / Personal computer that was commercially available from 1985 to the early 1990s Commodore, the commonly used name for Commodore International, was a US-American Electronics company based in West Chester Pennsylvania The Amiga is a family of Personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. By 1988 the 3½-inch was outselling the 5¼-inch^[25].

Note that the term "3½-inch" or "3. 5 inch" disk was primarily targeted at the non-metric US market and was rounded from the actual metric size of 90 mm used internationally.

The 3½-inch disks had, by way of their rigid case's slide-in-place metal cover, the significant advantage of being much better protected against unintended physical contact with the disk surface than 5¼-inch disks when the disk was handled outside the disk drive. When the disk was inserted, a part inside the drive moved the metal cover aside, giving the drive's read/write heads the necessary access to the magnetic recording surfaces. Adding the slide mechanism resulted in a slight departure from the previous square outline. The irregular, rectangular shape had the additional merit that it made it impossible to insert the disk sideways by mistake as had indeed been possible with earlier formats.

The shutter mechanism was not without its problems, however. On old or roughly treated disks the shutter could bend away from the disk. This made it vulnerable to being ripped off completely (which does not damage the disk itself but does leave it much more vulnerable to dust), or worse, catching inside a drive and possibly either getting stuck inside or damaging the drive.

Like the 5¼-inch, the 3½-inch disk underwent an evolution of its own. When Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984, it used single-sided 3½-inch disk drives with an advertised capacity of 400 kB. The encoding technique used by these drives was known as GCR, or Group Code Recording (similar recording methods were used by Commodore on its 5 1/4 inch drives and Sirius Computer in its Victor 9000 non PC compatible MS-Dos machine). In Computer science, group code recording (GCR refers to several distinct but related encoding methods for magnetic media Somewhat later, PC-compatible machines began using single-sided 3½-inch disks with an advertised capacity of 360 kB (the same as a single-sided 5¼-inch disk), and a different, incompatible recording format called MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation). This article is about Modified Frequency Modulation For other uses of MFM see the MFM (disambiguation GCR and MFM drives (and their formatted disks) were incompatible, although the physical disks were the same. In 1986, Apple introduced double-sided, 800 kB disks, still using GCR, and around the same time, 720 kB double-sided double-density MFM disks began to appear on PC-compatibles.

A newer and better, MFM-based, "high-density" format, displayed as "HD" on the disks themselves and storing 1440 kB of data, was introduced in 1987. These HD disks had an extra hole in the case on the opposite side of the write-protect notch. IBM used this format on their PS/2 series introduced in 1987. The Personal System/2 or PS/2 was IBM 's third generation of Personal computers The PS/2 line released to the public in 1987 was created by IBM in an Apple started using "HD" in 1988, on the Macintosh IIx, and the HD floppy drive soon became universal on virtually all Macintosh and PC hardware. The Macintosh IIx was introduced by Apple in 1988 as an incremental update of the original Macintosh II model Apple's FDHD (Floppy Disk High Density) drive was capable of reading and writing both GCR and MFM formatted disks, and thus made it relatively easy to exchange files with PC users. SuperDrive is a trademark used by Apple Inc for two different storage drives from 1988–1999 to refer to a high-density Floppy disk drive capable of reading all Apple later marketed this drive as the SuperDrive. SuperDrive is a trademark used by Apple Inc for two different storage drives from 1988–1999 to refer to a high-density Floppy disk drive capable of reading all Interestingly, Apple began using the SuperDrive brand name again around 2003 to denote their all-formats CD/DVD reader/writer.

Besides Sony, Apple was the first major manufacturer to start selling computers with 3½-inch disk drives as well as the first to stop shipping those in 1998 with introduction of iMac. The iMac is a desktop Macintosh computer designed and built by Apple Inc

Another advance in the oxide coatings allowed for a new "extended-density" ("ED") format at 2880 kB introduced on the second generation NeXT Computers in 1991, and on IBM PS/2 model 57 also in 1991, but by the time it was available it was already too small in capacity to be a useful advance over the HD format and never became widely used. The NeXT Computer and NeXTcube were high-end workstation computers developed manufactured and sold by NeXT from 1988 until 1993 The 3½-inch drives sold more than a decade later still use the same 1. 44 MB HD format that was standardized in 1989, in ISO 9529-1,2. ISO 9529 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization which defines the data format used on 3

Write-protection tab

When the write-protect notch/tab is open, the floppy is write-protected. When the tab/hole is closed, the floppy is writable. This protection is implemented by the drive hardware, and cannot be over-ridden by software. This mechanism is similar to the audio cassette. The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a Magnetic tape sound

Reported 3. 5" DS-HD floppy capacity

The unformatted capacity of a 3½-inch double sided high density floppy disk is advertised as approximately 2 million bytes. The formatted capacity of an IBM PC-compatible disk is 1,457,664 bytes. That value is approximately 1. 47 megabytes (base 10) or 1. 41 mebibytes (base 2). However neither 1. 47 megabytes nor 1. 41 mebibytes is generally used.

The number most frequently printed on such floppies is "1. 44 MB" which incorrectly combines Base 10 with Base 2 terminology to yield 1. 44 "kilo-kibibytes" where kilo=1000 and kibi=1024 (1. 44 * 1000 * 1024 bytes). Since "kilo-kibibytes" is not an SI standard unit, the label is incorrect and confusing for users. As example, a person using floppies to back-up his hard drive, and expecting 1. 44 MB to mean 1. 44 million bytes, would miscalculate the number of floppies needed for the project.

Floppy replacements

Through the early 1990s a number of attempts were made by various companies to introduce newer floppy-like formats based on the now-universal 3½-inch physical format. Most of these systems provided the ability to read and write standard DD and HD disks, while at the same time introducing a much higher-capacity format as well. There were a number of times where it was felt that the existing floppy was just about to be replaced by one of these newer devices, but a variety of problems ensured this never took place. None of these ever reached the point where it could be assumed that every current PC would have one, and they have now largely been replaced by CD and DVD burners and USB flash drives. A CD-R ( C ompact D isc- R ecordable is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. DVD (also known as " Digital Versatile Disc " or " Digital Video Disc " - see Etymology)is

The main technological change was the addition of tracking information on the disk surface to allow the read/write heads to be positioned more accurately. Normal disks have no such information, so the drives use the tracks themselves with a feedback loop in order to center themselves. Feedback is a circular causal Process whereby some proportion of a system's output is returned (fed back to the Input. The newer systems generally used marks burned onto the surface of the disk to find the tracks, allowing the track width to be greatly reduced.

Flextra

As early as 1988, Brier Technology introduced the Flextra BR 3020, which boasted 21. 4 MB (marketing, true size was 21,040 KiB,^[26] 25 MiB unformatted). Later the same year it introduced the BR3225, which doubled the capacity. This model could also read standard 3½-inch disks.

Apparently it used 3½-inch standard disks which had servo information embedded on them for use with the Twin Tier Tracking technology.

Floptical

In 1991, Insight Peripherals introduced the "Floptical", which used an infra-red LED to position the heads over marks in the disk surface. Floptical refers to a type of Disk drive that combines magnetic and optical technologies to store large amounts of data on media similar to 3½-inch Floppy disks Infrared ( IR) radiation is Electromagnetic radiation whose Wavelength is longer than that of Visible light, but shorter than that of The original drive stored 21 MB, while also reading and writing standard DD and HD floppies. In order to improve data transfer speeds and make the high-capacity drive usefully quick as well, the drives were attached to the system using a SCSI connector instead of the normal floppy controller. This made them appear to the operating system as a hard drive instead of a floppy, meaning that most PCs were unable to boot from them. An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination This again adversely affected pickup rates.

Insight licenced their technology to a number of companies, who introduced compatible devices as well as even larger-capacity formats. Most popular of these, by far, was the LS-120, mentioned below.

Zip drive

In 1994, Iomega introduced the Zip drive. The Iomega Corporation is a supplier of portable Computer storage devices network storage and media The Zip drive is a medium-capacity removable Disk storage system introduced by Iomega in late 1994 Not true to the 3½-inch form factor, hence not compatible with the standard 1. 44 MB floppies (which may have actually been a good thing for the drives as it removed a big potential source of problems), it became the most popular of the "super floppies". It boasted 100 MB, later 250 MB, and then 750 MB of storage. Though Zip drives gained in popularity for several years they never reached the same market penetration as floppy drives as only some new computers were sold with the drives. Eventually the falling prices of CD-R and CD-RW media and flash drives, along with notorious hardware failures (the so-called "click of death"), reduced the popularity of the Zip drive. A CD-R ( C ompact D isc- R ecordable is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. Compact Disc ReWritable (CD-RW is a rewritable Optical disc format Click of death is a term that became common in the late 1990s referring to the clicking sound in Disk storage systems that signals the device has failed, often catastrophically

A major reason for the failure of the Zip Drives is also attributed to the higher pricing they carried. However hardware vendors such as Hewlett Packard, Dell and Compaq had promoted the same at a very high level. Zip drive media were primarily popular for the excellent storage density and drive speed they carried, but were always overshadowed by the price.

LS-120

Announced in 1995, the "SuperDisk" drive, often seen with the brand names Matsushita (Panasonic) and Imation, had an initial capacity of 120 MB (120. Also known as the LS-120 and the later variant LS-240, the SuperDisk was introduced by 3M 's storage products group (later known as Imation Imation is a US based multi-national Corporation that designs manufactures sources or markets a wide range of recordable data storage media and consumer electronics products 375 MiB^[27]) using even higher density "LS-120" disks. A mebibyte (a contraction of me ga bi nary byte) is a unit of Information or Computer storage, abbreviated MiB.

It was upgraded ("LS-240") to 240 MB (240. 75 MiB). Not only could the drive read and write 1440 kB disks, but the last versions of the drives could write 32 MB onto a normal 1440 kB disk (see note below). Unfortunately, popular opinion held the Super Disk disks to be quite unreliable, though no more so than the Zip drives and SyQuest Technology offerings of the same period and there were also many reported problems moving standard floppies between LS-120 drives and normal floppy drives. The Zip drive is a medium-capacity removable Disk storage system introduced by Iomega in late 1994 SyQuest Technology Inc, now known as SYQT Inc, was an early entrant into the removable Hard disk market for Personal computers. This belief, true or otherwise, crippled adoption. The BIOS of many motherboards even to this day supports LS-120 drives as boot options. In Computing, the BIOS (ˈbaɪoʊs

Sony HiFD

Sony introduced their own floptical-like system in 1997 as the "150 MB Sony HiFD" which could hold 150 megabytes (157. The Sony HiFD ( Hi gh capacity F loppy D isk was an attempt by Sony to replace their own aging 3 3 actual megabytes) of data. Although by this time the LS-120 had already garnered some market penetration, industry observers nevertheless confidently predicted the HiFD would be the real floppy-killer and finally replace floppies in all machines.

After only a short time on the market the product was pulled, as it was discovered there were a number of performance and reliability problems that made the system essentially unusable. Sony then re-engineered the device for a quick re-release, but then extended the delay well into 1998 instead, and increased the capacity to "200 MB" (approximately 210 megabytes) while they were at it. By this point the market was already saturated by the Zip disk, so it never gained much market share.

Caleb Technology’s UHD144

The UHD144 drive surfaced early in 1998 as the it drive, and provided 144 MB of storage while also being compatible with the standard 1. The Caleb Technology UHD144 ( Ultra High Density) was a Floptical -based 144 MB Floppy disk system introduced in early 1998 marketed as the 44 MB floppies. The drive was slower than its competitors but the media were cheaper, running about $8 at introduction and $5 soon after.

Structure

A user inserts the floppy disk, medium opening first, into a 5¼-inch floppy disk drive (pictured, an internal model) and moves the lever down (by twisting on this model) to close the drive and engage the motor and heads with the disk.

The 5¼-inch disk had a large circular hole in the center for the spindle of the drive and a small oval aperture in both sides of the plastic to allow the heads of the drive to read and write the data. The magnetic medium could be spun by rotating it from the middle hole. A small notch on the right hand side of the disk would identify whether the disk was read-only or writable, detected by a mechanical switch or photo transistor above it. A photodiode is a type of Photodetector capable of converting Light into either current or Voltage, depending upon the mode of operation Another LED/phototransistor pair located near the center of the disk could detect a small hole once per rotation, called the index hole, in the magnetic disk. It was used to detect the start of each track, and whether or not the disk rotated at the correct speed; some operating systems, such as Apple DOS, did not use index sync, and often the drives designed for such systems lacked the index hole sensor. Apple DOS refers to Operating systems for the Apple II series of microcomputers from 1979 through early 1983 Disks of this type were said to be soft sector disks. In the context of Computer Disk storage, a sector is a subdivision of a track (Figure 1 item A on a Magnetic disk or Optical disc Very early 8-inch and 5¼-inch disks also had physical holes for each sector, and were termed hard sector disks. Hard sectoring in a magnetic or optical Data storage device is an archaic form of sectoring which uses a physical mark or hole in the recording Inside the disk were two layers of fabric designed to reduce friction between the medium and the outer casing, with the medium sandwiched in the middle. The outer casing was usually a one-part sheet, folded double with flaps glued or spot-welded together. A catch was lowered into position in front of the drive to prevent the disk from emerging, as well as to raise or lower the spindle (and, in two-sided drives, the upper read/write head).

The 3½-inch disk is made of two pieces of rigid plastic, with the fabric-medium-fabric sandwich in the middle to remove dust and dirt. The front has only a label and a small aperture for reading and writing data, protected by a spring-loaded metal cover, which is pushed back on entry into the drive.

The 3½-inch floppy disk drive automatically engages when the user inserts a disk, and disengages and ejects with the press of the eject button. On Macintoshes with built-in floppy drives, the disk is ejected by a motor (similar to a VCR) instead of manually; there is no eject button. Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc The disk's desktop icon is dragged onto the Trash icon to eject a disk.

The reverse has a similar covered aperture, as well as a hole to allow the spindle to connect into a metal plate glued to the medium. Two holes, bottom left and right, indicate the write-protect status and high-density disk correspondingly, a hole meaning protected or high density, and a covered gap meaning write-enabled or low density. (Incidentally, the write-protect and high-density holes on a 3½-inch disk are spaced exactly as far apart as the holes in punched A4 paper (8 cm), allowing write-protected floppies to be clipped into European ring binders. A series Paper in the A series format has a 1\sqrt{2} aspect ratio although this is rounded to the nearest millimetre Ring binders (British file) are Folders in which punched pieces of Paper may be held by means of Clamps running through the Holes ) A notch top right ensures that the disk is inserted correctly, and an arrow top left indicates the direction of insertion. The drive usually has a button that, when pressed, will spring the disk out at varying degrees of force. Some would barely make it out of the disk drive; others would shoot out at a fairly high speed. In a majority of drives, the ejection force is provided by the spring that holds the cover shut, and therefore the ejection speed is dependent on this spring. In PC-type machines, a floppy disk can be inserted or ejected manually at any time (evoking an error message or even lost data in some cases), as the drive is not continuously monitored for status and so programs can make assumptions that do not match actual status (i. IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. e. , disk 123 is still in the drive and has not been altered by any other agency). With Apple Macintosh computers, disk drives are continuously monitored by the OS; a disk inserted is automatically searched for content and one is ejected only when the software agrees the disk should be ejected. Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc This kind of disk drive (starting with the slim "Twiggy" drives of the late Apple "Lisa") does not have an eject button, but uses a motorized mechanism to eject disks; this action is triggered by the OS software (e. g. the user dragged the "drive" icon to the "trash can" icon). Should this not work (as in the case of a power failure or drive malfunction), one can insert a straightened paper clip into a small hole at the drive's front, thereby forcing the disk to eject (similar to that found on CD/DVD drives). A paper clip (or sometimes paperclip) is a device which holds several sheets of Paper together by means of Pressure: it leaves the paper intact and Some other computer designs (such as the Commodore Amiga) monitor for a new disk continuously, but still have push-button eject mechanisms. The Amiga is a family of Personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation.

The 3-inch disk bears much similarity to the 3½-inch type, with some unique and somehow curious features. One example is the rectangular-shaped plastic casing, almost taller than a 3½-inch disk, but narrower, and more than twice as thick, almost the size of a standard compact audio cassette. The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a Magnetic tape sound This made the disk look more like a greatly oversized present day memory card or a standard PC card notebook expansion card rather than a floppy disk. A memory card or flash memory card is a solid-state electronic Flash memory Data storage device used with Digital In Computing, PC Card (originally '''PCMCIA''', or PCMCIA Card is the Form factor of a peripheral interface designed for Laptop computers Despite the size, the actual 3-inch magnetic-coated disk occupied less than 50% of the space inside the casing, the rest being used by the complex protection and sealing mechanisms implemented on the disks. Such mechanisms were largely responsible for the thickness, length and high costs of the 3-inch disks. On the Amstrad machines the disks were typically flipped over to use both sides, as opposed to being truly double-sided. Double-sided mechanisms were available but rare.

Legacy

An example of a modern USB floppy disk drive.

The 8-inch, 5¼-inch and 3-inch formats can be considered almost completely obsolete, although 3½-inch drives and disks are still widely available. As of 2007 3½-inch drives are still available on many desktop PC systems, although it is usually now an optional extra or has to be bought and installed separately. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Hewlett-Packard has recently dropped supplying floppy drives as standard on business desktops. The majority of ATX and Micro-ATX PC cases are still designed to accommodate at least one 3. The ATX (for Advanced Technology Extended) form factor was created by Intel in 1995. microATX, also known as µATX (sometimes Transliterated as mATX or uATX on Online forums is a Small form factor standard 5" drive that can be accessed from the front of the PC (although this bay can be used for other devices, such as flash memory readers). As of 2007, HD floppy disks are still quite commonly available in most computer and stationery shops, although selection is usually very limited. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century.

The advent of other portable storage options, such as USB storage devices and recordable or rewritable CDs, and the rise of multi-megapixel digital photography has encouraged the creation and use of files larger than most 3½-inch disks can hold. A CD-R ( C ompact D isc- R ecordable is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. Compact Disc ReWritable (CD-RW is a rewritable Optical disc format A Compact Disc (also known as a CD) is an Optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio In Digital imaging, a pixel ( pict ure el ement is the smallest piece of information in an image Digital photography is a form of Photography that utilizes Digital technology to make Digital images of subjects In addition, the increasing availability of broadband and wireless Internet connections has decreased the utility of removable storage devices overall. The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks The 3½-inch floppy is growing as obsolete as its larger cousin a decade before. However, the 3½-inch floppy has been in continuous use longer than the 5¼-inch floppy.

Floppies are still used for emergency boots in aging systems which may lack support for bootable media such as CD-ROMs and USB devices. A boot disk is a removable digital data storage medium from which a Computer can load and run ( boot) an Operating system or utility program They are also still often required for setting up a new PC from the ground up, since even comparatively recent operating systems like Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 rely on third party drivers shipped on floppies; for example, SATA support during installation. An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination Windows XP is a family of 32-bit and 64-bit Operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and Windows Server 2003 (also referred to as Win2K3 is a server Operating system produced by Microsoft. Only Windows Vista, using to Windows PE, now allows drivers to be loaded from other than floppies during installation. Windows Vista (ˈvɪstə is a line of Operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and business desktops Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE is a lightweight version of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Vista Floppies are also still often required for BIOS updates, and as maintenance program carriers, since many BIOS and firmware update/restore programs are still designed to be executed from a bootable floppy disk. In Computing, the BIOS (ˈbaɪoʊs In Computing, firmware is a computer program that is Embedded in a hardware device for example a Microcontroller. A boot disk is a removable digital data storage medium from which a Computer can load and run ( boot) an Operating system or utility program Floppy drives are also used to access non-critical data that may still be on floppy disks, such as personal data or legacy games and software. As well, office workplaces have often disabled high volume writable media such as optical drivers and USB ports to prevent employees from taking large amounts of data, so the small capacity of the floppy limits the information compromised.

Apple, the first manufacturer to popularly include 3½-inch drives as standard equipment — on the Apple Macintosh in 1984 — was also the first manufacturer to not include them on new machines - in 1998 with the advent of the iMac. Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc The iMac is a desktop Macintosh computer designed and built by Apple Inc This made USB-connected floppy drives a popular accessory for the early iMacs, since the basic model of iMac at the time had only a CD-ROM drive, giving users no easy access to writable removable media. This transition away from floppies was easier for Apple, since all Macintosh models were able to boot and install their operating system from CD-ROM early on.

In February 2003, Dell, Inc. announced that they would no longer include floppy drives on their Dell Dimension home computers as standard equipment, although they are available as a selectable option^[28][29] for around $20 and can be purchased as an aftermarket OEM add-on anywhere between $5 and $25. The multinational technology company Dell Inc develops manufactures sells and supports Personal computers and other computer-related products Dell Dimension is a line of home desktop computers manufactured by Dell Inc. An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM is typically a company that uses a component made by a second company in its own product or sells the product of the second company

On 29 January 2007 the British computer retail chain PC World issued a statement saying that only 2% of the computers that they sold contained a built-in floppy disk drive and, once present stocks were exhausted, no more floppies would be sold. Events 904 - Sergius III comes out of retirement to take over the papacy from the deposed Antipope Christopher. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located This article is about PC World the UK computer retailer For the British magazine Personal Computer World ^[30][31][32]

The music industry still employs many types of electronic equipment that use floppy disks as a storage medium. Synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, and sequencers continue to use 3½-inch disks. Other storage options, such as CD-R, CD-RW, network connections, and USB storage devices have taken much longer to mature in this industry.

Compatibility

In general, different physical sizes of floppy disks are incompatible by definition, and disks can be loaded only on the correct size of drive. There were some drives available with both 3½-inch and 5¼-inch slots that were popular in the transition period between the sizes.

However, there are many more subtle incompatibilities within each form factor. For example, all but the earliest models of Apple Macintosh computers that have built-in floppy drives included a disk controller that can read, write and format IBM PC-format 3½-inch diskettes. However, few IBM-compatible computers use floppy disk drives that can read or write disks in Apple's variable speed format. For details on this, see the section More on floppy disk formats. A floppy disk is an increasingly Obsolete data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin flexible ("floppy" Magnetic storage medium encased

Within the world of IBM-compatible computers, the three densities of 3½-inch floppy disks are partially compatible. Higher density drives are built to read, write and even format lower density media without problems, provided the correct media are used for the density selected. However, if by whatever means a diskette is formatted at the wrong density, the result is a substantial risk of data loss due to magnetic mismatch between oxide and the drive head's writing attempts. Still, a fresh diskette that has been manufactured for high density use can theoretically be formatted as double density, but only if no information has ever been written on the disk using high density mode (for example, HD diskettes that are pre-formatted at the factory are out of the question). The magnetic strength of a high density record is stronger and will "overrule" the weaker lower density, remaining on the diskette and causing problems. However, in practice there are people who use downformatted (ED to HD, HD to DD) or even overformatted (DD to HD) without apparent problems. Doing so always constitutes a data risk, so one should weigh out the benefits (e. g. increased space and/or interoperability) versus the risks (data loss, permanent disk damage).

The 5¼-inch minifloppy

A square hole punch used for 5 1/4 floppy disks.

The holes on the right side of a 3½-inch disk can be altered as to 'fool' some disk drives or operating systems (others such as the Acorn Archimedes simply do not care about the holes) into treating the disk as a higher or lower density one, for backward compatibility or economical reasons. A data storage device is a device for recording (storing information (data An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd 's first general purpose Home computer based on their own 32-bit ARM RISC Possible modifications include:

• Drilling or cutting an extra hole into the right-lower side of a 3½-inch DD disk (symmetrical to the write-protect hole) in order to format the DD disk into a HD one. This was a popular practice during the early 1990s, as most people switched to HD from DD during those days and some of them "converted" some or all of their DD disks into HD ones, for gaining an extra "free" 720 KiB of disk space. There even was a special hole punch that was made to easily make this extra (square) hole in a floppy. A hole punch (known also as a hole puncher, paper puncher, holing pincer, or rarely perforator) is a common office tool that
• Taping or otherwise covering the right hole on a HD 3½-inch disk enables it to be 'downgraded' to DD format. This may be done for reasons such as compatibility issues with older computers, drives or devices that use DD floppies, like some electronic keyboard instruments and samplers^[33] where a 'downgraded' disk can be useful, as factory-made DD disks have become hard to find after the mid-1990s. A keyboard instrument is any musical instrument played using a Musical keyboard. A sampler is an electronic musical instrument closely related to a Synthesizer. See the section "Compatibility" above.
  • Note: By default, many older HD drives will recognize ED disks as DD ones, since they lack the HD-specific holes and the drives lack the sensors to detect the ED-specific hole. Most DD drives will also handle ED (and some even HD) disks as DD ones.
• Similarly, drilling an HD-like hole (under the ED one) into an ED (2880 kiB) disk for 'downgrading' it to HD (1440 kiB) format if there are many unusable ED disks due to the lack of a specific ED drive, which can now be used as normal HD disks.
• Even if such a format was hardly officially supported on any system, it is possible to "force" a 3½-inch floppy disk drive to be recognized by the system as a 5¼-inch 360 kB or 1200 kB one (on PCs and compatibles, this can be done by simply changing the CMOS BIOS settings) and thus format and read non-standard disk formats, such as a double sided 360 kB 3½-inch disk. IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor ( CMOS) (pronounced "see-moss" siːmɔːs ˈsiːmɒs is a major class of Integrated circuits CMOS technology In Computing, the BIOS (ˈbaɪoʊs Possible applications include data exchange with obsolete CP/M systems, for example with an Amstrad CPC. The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit Home computers produced by Amstrad Plc during the 1980s and early 1990s

The situation was even more complex with 5¼-inch diskettes. The head gap of an 80 track (1200 kB in the PC world) drive is shorter than that of a 40 track (360 kB in the PC world) drive, but will format, read and write 40 track diskettes with apparent success provided the controller supports double stepping (or the manufacturer fitted a switch to do double stepping in hardware). A blank 40 track disk formatted and written on an 80 track drive can be taken to a 40 track drive without problems, similarly a disk formatted on a 40 track drive can be used on an 80 track drive. But a disk written on a 40 track drive and updated on an 80 track drive becomes permanently unreadable on any 360 kB drive, owing to the incompatibility of the track widths (special, very slow programs could have been used to overcome this problem). There are several other 'bad' scenarios.

Prior to the problems with head and track size, there was a period when just trying to figure out which side of a "single sided" diskette was the right side was a problem. Both Radio Shack and Apple used 360 kB single sided 5¼-inch disks, and both sold disks labeled "single sided" that were certified for use on only one side, even though they in fact were coated in magnetic material on both sides. RadioShack Corporation (formerly Tandy Corporation) (  is a chain of electronics retail stores in the United States, as well as parts of North America The irony was that the disks would work on both Radio Shack and Apple machines, yet the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I computers used one side and the Apple II machines used the other, regardless of whether there was software available which could make sense of the other format. TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation 's desktop Microcomputer model line sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early

"Sub Battle Simulator" for the Tandy Color Computer 3 was released on a "flippy" disk

For quite a while in the 1980s, users could purchase a special tool called a "disk notcher" which would allow them to cut a second "write unprotect" notch in these diskettes and thus use them as "flippies" (either inserted as intended or upside down): both sides could now be written on and thereby the data storage capacity was doubled. The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer (also called Tandy Color Computer, or CoCo) was a Home computer launched in 1980 Other users made do with a steady hand and a hole punch or scissors. A hole punch (known also as a hole puncher, paper puncher, holing pincer, or rarely perforator) is a common office tool that Scissors are hand operated cutting instruments consisting of a pair of Metal Blades connected in such a way that the blades meet and cut materials placed For re-protecting a disk side, one would simply place a piece of opaque tape over the notch or hole in question. These "flippy disk procedures" were followed by owners of practically every home-computer single sided disk drives. Proper disk labels became quite important for such users. Flippies were eventually adopted by some manufacturers, with a few programs being sold in this medium (they were also widely used for software distribution on systems that could be used with both 40 track and 80 track drives but lacked the software to read a 40 track disk in an 80 track drive).

Certain software companies used tracking outside the standard track designations for copy protection. One notable game that used this technique was the popular game Lode Runner, by Brøderbund, which used quarter tracks written on the original disk as a form of copy protection. Lode Runner is a 1983 Platform game, first published by Brøderbund. Brøderbund Software was an American maker of Computer games Educational software and The Print Shop productivity tools Because many disk copying programs did not attempt to copy the secret quarter read/write head increment tracks this kind of protection was mostly successful to the average backup program.

There is an urban myth that it is safe to view a solar eclipse through the film of a floppy removed from its case. An urban legend or urban myth is a form of modern Folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is wholly or partially obscured Despite some anecdotal support, this in fact does not offer any protection. ^[34]

More on floppy disk formats

Using the disk space efficiently

In general, data is written to floppy disks in a series of sectors, angular blocks of the disk, and in tracks, concentric rings at a constant radius, e. g. the HD format of 3½-inch floppy disks uses 512 bytes per sector, 18 sectors per track, 80 tracks per side and two sides, for a total of 1,474,560 bytes per disk. (Some disk controllers can vary these parameters at the user's request, increasing the amount of storage on the disk, although these formats may not be able to be read on machines with other controllers; e. g. Microsoft applications were often distributed on Distribution Media Format (DMF) disks, a hack that allowed 1. Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational Computer technology Corporation, which rose to dominate the Home computer Distribution Media Format (DMF is a format for Floppy disks that Microsoft used to distribute Software. 68 MB (1680 kiB) to be stored on a 3½-inch floppy by formatting it with 21 sectors instead of 18, while these disks were still properly recognized by a standard controller. ) On the IBM PC and also on the MSX, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, and most other microcomputer platforms, disks are written using a Constant Angular Velocity (CAV)—Constant Sector Capacity format. MSX was the name of a standardized Home computer architecture in the 1980s The Atari ST is a home / Personal computer that was commercially available from 1985 to the early 1990s The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit Home computers produced by Amstrad Plc during the 1980s and early 1990s In Optical storage, constant angular velocity (CAV is a qualifier for the rated speed of an Optical disc drive, and may also be applied to the writing speed of recordable This means that the disk spins at a constant speed, and the sectors on the disk all hold the same amount of information on each track regardless of radial location.

However, this is not the most efficient way to use the disk surface, even with available drive electronics. Because the sectors have a constant angular size, the 512 bytes in each sector are packed into a smaller length near the disk's center than nearer the disk's edge. A better technique would be to increase the number of sectors/track toward the outer edge of the disk, from 18 to 30 for instance, thereby keeping constant the amount of physical disk space used for storing each 512 byte sector (see zone bit recording). Zone Bit Recording ( ZBR) is used by Disk drives to store more sectors per track on outer tracks than on inner tracks Apple implemented this solution in the early Macintosh computers by spinning the disk slower when the head was at the edge while keeping the data rate the same, allowing them to store 400 kB per side, amounting to an extra 160 kB on a double-sided disk. This higher capacity came with a serious disadvantage, however: the format required a special drive mechanism and control circuitry not used by other manufacturers, meaning that Mac disks could not be read on any other computers. Apple eventually gave up on the format and used constant angular velocity with HD floppy disks on their later machines; these drives were still unique to Apple as they still supported the older variable-speed format. In Optical storage, constant angular velocity (CAV is a qualifier for the rated speed of an Optical disc drive, and may also be applied to the writing speed of recordable

The Commodore 64/128

Commodore started its tradition of special disk formats with the 5¼-inch disk drives accompanying its PET/CBM, VIC-20 and Commodore 64 home computers, the same as the 1540 and 1541 drives used with the later two machines. The PET ( P ersonal E lectronic T ransactor) was a home -/ Personal computer produced by Commodore starting in 1977 The VIC-20 ( Germany: VC-20; Japan: VIC-1001) is an 8-bit Home computer which was sold by Commodore Business Machines The Commodore 1540 (also known as the VIC-1540) was the companion Floppy disk drive for the Commodore VIC-20 Home computer. Commodore64 fdd1541 backjpg|thumb|325px|Back panel view of the Commodore 1541 disk drive The standard Commodore Group Code Recording scheme used in 1541 and compatibles employed four different data rates depending upon track position (see zone bit recording). In Computer science, group code recording (GCR refers to several distinct but related encoding methods for magnetic media Zone Bit Recording ( ZBR) is used by Disk drives to store more sectors per track on outer tracks than on inner tracks Tracks 1 to 17 had 21 sectors, 18 to 24 had 19, 25 to 30 had 18, and 31 to 35 had 17, for a disk capacity of 170 kB (170. 75 KiB). Unique among personal computer architectures, the operating system on the computer itself was unaware of the details of the disk and filesystem; disk operations were handled by Commodore DOS instead, which was implemented as firmware on the disk drive. Commodore DOS, aka CBM DOS, was the Disk operating system used with Commodore 's 8-bit computers. In Computing, firmware is a computer program that is Embedded in a hardware device for example a Microcontroller.

Eventually Commodore gave in to disk format standardization, and made its last 5¼-inch drives, the 1570 and 1571, compatible with Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM), to enable the Commodore 128 to work with CP/M disks from several vendors. The Commodore 1570 was a 5¼" Floppy disk drive for the Commodore 128 home / Personal computer. The Commodore 1571 was Commodore's high-end 5¼ " Floppy disk drive This article is about Modified Frequency Modulation For other uses of MFM see the MFM (disambiguation The Commodore 128 ( C128, CBM 128, C=128) home / Personal computer was the last 8-bit machine which was commercially CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers is an Operating system originally created for Intel 8080 / 85 based Microcomputers by Gary Kildall Equipped with one of these drives, the C128 was able to access both C64 and CP/M disks, as it needed to, as well as MS-DOS disks (using third-party software), which was a crucial feature for some office work.

Commodore also offered its 8-bit machines a 3½-inch 800 kB disk format with its 1581 disk drive, which used only MFM. The Commodore 1581 is a 3½ inch Double sided Double density Floppy disk drive made by Commodore Business Machines (CBM primarily for its

The GEOS operating system used a disk format that was largely identical to the Commodore DOS format with a few minor extensions; while generally compatible with standard Commodore disks, certain disk maintenance operations could corrupt the filesystem without proper supervision from the GEOS kernel. GEOS ( G raphic E nvironment O perating S ystem) was an Operating system from Berkeley Softworks (later GeoWorks

The hardware for the Atari 8-bit computer's floppy drives recognized sectors numbered from 1 to 720. The DOS' 2. 0 disk bitmap, however, which provides information on sector allocation, counts from 0 to 719. As a result, sector 720 could not be written to by the DOS. Some companies used a copy protection scheme where "hidden" data was put in sector 720 that could not be copied through the DOS copy option.

The Commodore Amiga

The pictured chip, codenamed Paula, controlled floppy access on all revisions of the Commodore Amiga as one of its many functions. The Original Chip Set ( OCS) was a Chipset used in the earliest Commodore Amiga computers and defined the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities

The Commodore Amiga computers used an 880 kB format (eleven 512-byte sectors per track) on a 3½-inch floppy. Commodore, the commonly used name for Commodore International, was a US-American Electronics company based in West Chester Pennsylvania The Amiga is a family of Personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Because the entire track was written at once, inter-sector gaps could be eliminated, saving space. The Amiga floppy controller was much more flexible than the one on the PC: it did not impose arbitrary format restrictions, and foreign formats such as the IBM PC could also be handled (by use of CrossDos, which was included in later versions of Workbench). AmigaOS is the default native Operating system of the Amiga personal computer With the correct filesystem software, an Amiga could theoretically read any arbitrary format on the 3. 5-inch floppy, including those recorded at a differential rotation rate. On the PC, however, there is no way to read an Amiga disk without special hardware or a second floppy drive,^[35][36] which is also a crucial reason for an emulator being technically unable to access real Amiga disks inserted in a standard PC floppy disk drive. An emulator duplicates (provides an emulation of the functions of one System using a different system so that the second system behaves like (and appears to

Commodore never upgraded the Amiga chip set to support high-density floppies, but sold a custom drive (made by Chinon) that spun at half speed (150 RPM) when a high-density floppy was inserted, enabling the existing floppy controller to be used. The Original Chip Set ( OCS) was a Chipset used in the earliest Commodore Amiga computers and defined the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities This drive was introduced with the launch of the Amiga 3000, although the later Amiga 1200 was only fitted with the standard DD drive. The A3000, also known as the Commodore Amiga 3000 was a much more serious proposition to build a professional multimedia computer than the previous A2000 The Amiga 1200, or A1200, was Commodore International 's third-generation Amiga computer aimed at the home market The Amiga HD disks could handle 1760 kB, but using special software programs it could hold even more data. A company named Kolff Computer Supplies also made an external HD floppy drive (KCS Dual HD Drive) available which could handle HD format diskettes on all Amiga computer systems ^[37].

Because of storage reasons, the use of emulators and preserving data, many disks were packed into disk-images. Currently popular formats are . ADF (Amiga Disk File), . Amiga Disk File aka ADF is a file format used by Amiga computers and Emulators to store images of disks. DMS (DiskMasher) and . Disk the Masher system (dms was an often used method on Amiga, to create a Compressed image of a discs (usually floppy) IPF (Interchangeable Preservation Format) files. The DiskMasher format is copyright-protected and has problems storing particular sequences of bits due to bugs in the compression algorithm, but was widely used in the pirate and demo scenes. ADF has been around for almost as long as the Amiga itself though it was not initially called by that name. Amiga Disk File aka ADF is a file format used by Amiga computers and Emulators to store images of disks. Only with the advent of the Internet and Amiga emulators has it become a popular way of distributing disk images. IPF files were created to allow preservation of commercial games which have copy protection, which is something that ADF and DMS unfortunately cannot do.

The BBC Micro and Acorn Archimedes

The British company Acorn used non-standard disk formats in their 8-bit BBC Micro and its successor the 32-bit Acorn Archimedes. Acorn Computers was a British Computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978 The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd 's first general purpose Home computer based on their own 32-bit ARM RISC The original disk implementation for the BBC Micro stored 100 KiB (40 track) or 200 KiB (80 track) per side on 5¼-inch discs in a custom format using the Disc Filing System (DFS). The Disc Filing System (DFS is a computer File system

The later BBC Master added the Advanced Disc Filing System (ADFS), which used double-density recording and added the ability to treat both sides of the disc as a single drive. The Advanced Disc Filing System (ADFS is a computing file system particular to the Acorn computer range and RISC OS based successors This offered three formats: S (small) — 160 KiB, 40-track single-sided; M (medium) — 320 KiB, 80-track single-sided; and L (large) — 640 KiB, 80-track double-sided. ADFS provided hierarchical directory structure, rather than the flat model of DFS. ADFS also stored some metadata about each file, notably a load address, an execution address, owner and public privileges and a "lock" bit. Even on the eight-bit BBC machines, load addresses were stored in 32-bit format. The BBC Master Compact marked the move to 3½-inch disks, using the same ADFS formats.

The Acorn Archimedes added D format, which increased the number of objects per directory from 44 to 77, and increased the storage space to 800 KiB. The extra space was obtained by using 1024 byte sectors instead of the usual 512 bytes, thus reducing the space needed for inter-sector gaps. As a further enhancement, successive tracks were offset by a sector, giving time for the head to advance to the next track without missing the first sector, thus increasing bulk throughput. The Archimedes used special values in the ADFS load/execute address metadata to store a 12-bit filetype field and a 40-bit timestamp.

RISC OS 2 introduced E format, which retained the same physical layout as D format, but supported file fragmentation and auto-compaction. RISC OS is an Operating system originally created by British manufacturer Acorn Computers for their ARM based Computers ranging Post-1991 machines including the A5000 and Risc PC added support for high-density discs with F format, storing 1600 KiB. The Risc PC (codenamed Medusa) was Acorn Computers 's next generation RISC OS / Acorn RISC Machine computer launched in 1994 However, the PC combo IO chips used were unable to format discs with sector skew, losing some performance. ADFS and the PC controllers also support extended-density disks as G format, storing 3200 KiB, but ED drives were never fitted to production machines.

With RISC OS 3, the Archimedes could also read and write disk formats from other machines, for example the Atari ST and the IBM PC. With third party software it could even read the BBC Micro's original single density 5¼-inch DFS disks. The Amiga's disks could not be read as they used unusual sector gap markers.

The Acorn filesystem design was interesting because all ADFS-based storage devices connected to a module called FileCore which provided almost all the features required to implement an ADFS-compatible filesystem. Because of this modular design, it was easy in RISC OS 3 to add support for so-called image filing systems. These were used to implement completely transparent support for IBM PC format floppy disks, including the slightly different Atari ST format. The Atari ST is a home / Personal computer that was commercially available from 1985 to the early 1990s Computer Concepts released a package that implemented an image filing system to allow access to high density Macintosh format disks. Xara is a UK -based software company founded in 1981 It has developed software for a variety of computer platforms in chronological order The Acorn Atom, Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc

4-inch floppy diskettes

In the mid-80s, IBM developed a 4-inch floppy diskette, the Demidiskette. This program was driven by aggressive cost goals, but missed the pulse of the industry. The prospective users, both inside and outside IBM, preferred standardization to what by release time were small cost reductions, and were unwilling to retool packaging, interface chips and applications for a proprietary design. The product never appeared in the light of day, and IBM wrote off several hundred million dollars of development and manufacturing facility.

Auto-loaders

IBM developed, and several companies copied, an autoloader mechanism that could load a stack of floppies one at a time into a drive unit. An autoloader, or autochanger, is a data storage device consisting of at least one Tape drive (the drive a method of loading tapes into the drive (the These were very bulky systems, and suffered from media hangups and chew-ups more than standard drives, but they were a partial answer to replication and large removable storage needs. The smaller 5¼- and 3½-inch floppy made this a much easier technology to perfect.

Floppy mass storage

A number of companies, including IBM and Burroughs, experimented with using large numbers of unenclosed disks to create massive amounts of storage. The Burroughs system used a stack of 256 12-inch disks, spinning at high speed. The disk to be accessed was selected by using air jets to part the stack, and then a pair of heads flew over the surface as in any standard hard disk drive. This approach in some ways anticipated the Bernoulli disk technology implemented in the Iomega Bernoulli Box, but head crashes or air failures were spectacularly messy. The Iomega Corporation is a supplier of portable Computer storage devices network storage and media The Bernoulli Box (or simply Bernoulli) is a high-capacity removable Disk storage system that was Iomega 's first popular product A head crash is a specific type of Hard disk failure, and occurs when the read-write head of a Hard disk drive touches its rotating platter The program did not reach production.

2-inch floppy disks

See also: Video Floppy

2-inch Video Floppy Disk from Canon. A Video Floppy is a Video storage medium in the form of a 2" magnetic Floppy disk used to store still frames of analog Composite video.

A small floppy disk was also used in the late 1980s to store video information for still video cameras such as the Sony Mavica (not to be confused with current Digital Mavica models) and the Ion and Xapshot cameras from Canon. is a multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato Tokyo, Japan, and one of the world's largest Media conglomerates with Mavica was a brand of Sony Cameras which used removable disks as the main recording media is a Japanese Multinational corporation that specializes in imaging and optical products including Cameras photocopiers and Computer printers It was officially referred to as a Video Floppy (or VF for short).

VF was not a digital data format; each track on the disk stored one video field in the analog interlaced composite video format in either the North American NTSC or European PAL standard. For the method of incrementally displaying Raster graphics, see Interlace (bitmaps. Composite video is the format of an Analog television (picture only signal before it is combined with a sound signal and modulated onto an RF NTSC ( National Television System Committee) is the Analog television system used in the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is a colour -encoding system used in Broadcast television systems in large parts of the world This yielded a capacity of 25 images per disk in frame mode and 50 in field mode.

The same media were used digitally formatted - 720 kB double-sided, double-density - in the Zenith Minisport laptop computer circa 1989. The Zenith MiniSport, introduced in 1989 by Zenith Electronics Corporation, was a small Laptop based on a 80C88 CMOS CPU running at 4 Although the media exhibited nearly identical performance to the 3½-inch disks of the time, they were not successful. This was due in part to the scarcity of other devices using this drive making it impractical for software transfer, and high media cost which was much more than 3½-inch and 5¼-inch disks of the time.

Ultimate capacity and speed

Floppy disk drive and floppy media manufacturers specify an unformatted capacity, which is, for example, 2. 0 MB for a standard 3½-inch HD floppy. It is implied that this data capacity should not be exceeded since exceeding such limitations will most likely degrade the design margins of the floppy system and could result in performance problems such as inability to interchange or even loss of data.

User available data capacity is a function of the particular disk format used which in turn is determined by the FDD controller manufacturer and the settings applied to its controller. The differences between formats can result in user data capacities ranging from 720 KiB (. 737 MB) or less up to 1760 KiB (1. 80 MB) or even more on a "standard" 3½-inch HD floppy. The highest capacity techniques require much tighter matching of drive head geometry between drives; this is not always possible and cannot be relied upon. The LS-240 drive supports a (rarely used) 32 MB capacity on standard 3½-inch HD floppies—it is, however, a write-once technique, and cannot be used in a read/write/read mode. All the data must be read off, changed as needed and rewritten to the disk. The format also requires an LS-240 drive to read.

Some special hardware/software tools, such as the CatWeasel floppy disk controller and software, which claim up to 2. The Catweasel is a family of enhanced floppy drive controllers from German company Individual Computers. A floppy disk controller (FDC is a special-purpose chip and associated circuitry that directs and controls reading from and writing to a computer's floppy disk drive 23 MB of formatted capacity on a HD floppy. Such formats are not standard, hard to read in other drives and possibly even later with the same drive, and are probably not very reliable. It is probably true that floppy disks can surely hold an extra 10–20% formatted capacity versus their "nominal" values, but at the expense of reliability or hardware complexity.

DSED 3½" FDDs introduced by Toshiba in 1987 and adopted by IBM on the PS/2 in 1994^[10] operate at twice the data rate and have twice the capacity of DSHD 3½" FDDs^[38]. The only serious attempt to speed up a 3. 5” floppy drive beyond 2X was a 10X floppy drive. X10 accelerated floppy drive. The X-10 Fastcache Floppy Drive was a Floppy disk Disk drive that read 3 It used a combo of RAM and 4X spindle speed to read a floppy in less than 6 seconds vs. the over 1 min time it normally takes.

3½-inch HD floppy drives typically have a transfer rate of 1000 kilobits/second (minus overhead such as error correction and file handling). (For comparison a 1X CD transfers at 1200 kilobits/second (maximum), and a 1X DVD transfers at approximately 11,000 kilobits/second. ) While the floppy's data rate cannot be easily changed, overall performance can be improved by optimizing drive access times, shortening some BIOS introduced delays (especially on the IBM PC and compatible platforms), and by changing the sector:shift parameter of a disk, which is, roughly, the numbers of sectors that are skipped by the drive's head when moving to the next track. In Computing, the BIOS (ˈbaɪoʊs IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT.

This happens because sectors are not typically written exactly in a sequential manner but are scattered around the disk, which introduces yet another delay. Older machines and controllers may take advantage of these delays to cope with the data flow from the disk without having to actually stop it.

By changing this parameter, the actual sector sequence may become more adequate for the machine's speed. For example, an IBM format 1440 kB disk formatted with a sector:shift ratio of 3:2 has a sequential reading time (for reading all of the disk in one go) of just 1 minute, versus 1 minute and 20 seconds or more of a "normally" formatted disk. It is interesting to note that the "specially" formatted disk is very—if not completely—compatible with all standard controllers and BIOS, and generally requires no extra software drivers, as the BIOS generally "adapts" well to this slightly modified format.

Usability

One of the chief usability problems of the floppy disk is its vulnerability. Even inside a closed plastic housing, the disk medium is still highly sensitive to dust, condensation and temperature extremes. As with any magnetic storage, it is also vulnerable to magnetic fields. Blank floppies have usually been distributed with an extensive set of warnings, cautioning the user not to expose it to conditions which can endanger it.

Users damaging floppy disks (or their contents) were once a staple of "stupid user" folklore among computer technicians. These stories poked fun at users who stapled floppies to papers, made faxes or photocopies of them when asked to "copy a disk", or stored floppies by holding them with a magnet to a file cabinet. Fax (short for facsimile, from Latin fac simile, "make similar" i A photocopier (or copier is a machine that makes Paper copies of documents and other visual images quickly and cheaply Also, these same users were, conversely, often the victims of technicians' hoaxes. Stories of them being carried on Subway/Underground systems wrapped in tin-foil to protect them from the magnetic fields of the electric power supply were common (for an explanation of why this is plausible, see Faraday cage). A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure formed by conducting material, or by a mesh of such material The flexible 5¼-inch disk could also (folklorically) be abused by rolling it into a typewriter to type a label, or by removing the disk medium from the plastic enclosure used to store it safely. A typewriter is a mechanical or Electromechanical device with a set of "keys" that when pressed cause characters to be printed on a medium

On the other hand, the 3½-inch floppy has also been lauded for its mechanical usability by HCI expert Donald Norman:

Proper Handling

Floppy disks and the data stored on them are vulnerable to damage from mishandling—for example from:

• Magnetic fields.
• Flexing or bending.
• Excessive temperature.
• Touching the magnetic surfaces.
• Solvents or other reactive chemicals.
• Removal of the disk from a drive while in use.
• Excessive amounts of dust, smoke, or other pollutants.

The floppy as a metaphor

Screenshot of the toolbar in Openoffice.org, highlighting the Save icon, a floppy disk. OpenOfficeorg ( OOo or OOo) is a free Cross-platform office application suite available for a number of different computer

For more than two decades, the floppy disk was the primary external writable storage device used. Also, in a non-network environment, floppies have been the primary means of transferring data between computers (sometimes jokingly referred to as Sneakernet or Frisbeenet). Sneakernet is a tongue-in-cheek term used to describe the transfer of electronic information especially Computer files by physically carrying removable media such as Magnetic Floppy disks are also, unlike hard disks, handled and seen; even a novice user can identify a floppy disk. Because of all these factors, the image of the floppy disk has become a metaphor for saving data, and the floppy disk symbol is often seen in programs on buttons and other user interface elements related to saving files. An Interface metaphor is a set of User interface visuals actions and procedures that exploit specific knowledge that users already have of other domains

References in popular culture

• New Order's dance track "Blue Monday" owes some of its popularity to the 12-inch version of the single initially being shipped in a sleeve designed to resemble a 5¼-inch floppy. New Order are an English rock group formed in 1980 by Bernard Sumner ( vocals, Guitars Synthesizers, Peter Hook " Blue Monday " is a dance pop song recorded in 1982 and originally released as a single in 1983 by British band New Order, and later remixed for further releases
• Fatboy Slim's 1995 album Better Living Through Chemistry features a 3½-inch floppy with the track names on its label as the main album art in homage to Blue Monday. Fatboy Slim, also known as Norman Cook, (born Quentin Leo Cook on 31 July 1963 is a British DJ and Big beat musician Better Living Through Chemistry is the first album by Fatboy Slim.
• In the television series Futurama, the character Bender's entire mind is shown to be stored on one IBM formatted floppy disk. Futurama is an Emmy Award -winning animated American sitcom created by Matt Groening, and developed by Groening and Bender, full name Bender Bending Rodríguez, designated Bending Unit 22, is a fictional Robot character in the Animated television series
• In the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the spell to restore Angel's soul is stored on a floppy disk. Fictional narratives (and works of art exist beyond their completion e Angel is a Fictional character created by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt for the Television programs Buffy the Vampire
• In Sixteen Candles, Farmer Ted bets his friends a quantity of floppy disks that he will have sex with Samantha. Sixteen Candles is a 1984 Coming-of-age film starring Molly Ringwald, Michael Schoeffling and Anthony Michael Hall

See also

• RaWrite2 (a floppy disk image file writer/creator)
• On Unix or Unix-like systems the dd program can be used to write an image to a floppy. RAWRITE2 is a Disk image file writer/creator for Floppy disks for MS-DOS 3 Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer A Unix-like (sometimes shortened to *nix) Operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system while not necessarily conforming dd is a common UNIX program whose primary purpose is the Low-level copying and conversion of raw Data.
• Don't Copy That Floppy

Notes

References

• Weyhrich, Steven (2005). "The Disk II" – A detailed essay describing one of the first commercial floppy disk drives (from the Apple II History website)
• Immers, Richard; Neufeld, Gerald G. (1984). Inside Commodore DOS. The Complete Guide to the 1541 Disk Operating System. DATAMOST, Inc & Reston Publishing Company, Inc. (Prentice-Hall). ISBN 0-8359-3091-2.
• Englisch, Lothar; Szczepanowski, Norbert (1984). The Anatomy of the 1541 Disk Drive. Grand Rapids, MI: Abacus Software (translated from the original 1983 German edition, Düsseldorf: Data Becker GmbH). ISBN 0-916439-01-1.
• Hewlett Packard: 9121D/S Disc Memory Operator's Manual; Printed 1 September 1982; Part No. Events 462 - Possible start of first Byzantine indiction cycle. Year 1982 ( MCMLXXXII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar) 09121-90000

External links

• Jumper settings for Floppy Disk
• Programming Floppy Disk Controllers
• HowStuffWorks: How Floppy Disk Drives Work – By Gary Brown.
• Computer Hope: Information about computer floppy drives – Including abbreviated history, physical parameters and cable pin specifications.
• A List of Floppy Disk Formats
• Floppy interfaces pinouts
• "There is no such thing as a 3.5 inch floppy disc." – By Jonathan de Boyne Pollard
• "There is no such thing as a 1.44 MB standard format floppy disc." – By Jonathan de Boyne Pollard
• NCITS (mention of ANSI X3. 162 (5¼-inch) and X3. 171 (90 mm) floppy standards)
• Mac OS X floppy disk RAID - how to create a RAID array with floppy disks using Mac OS X
• Tandon Floppy Disk Drive Manuals
• Persci Floppy Disk Drive Manuals
• The 3" Bible
• Floppy Drive Tech Info