Floppy Disk Topics

• sinclair zx spectrum
• industrial computer equipment
• amstrad cpc
• msx 2
• floppy disk drives
• floppy disk drive
• diskette drive
• external hard drives
• commodore 64
• password reset disk
• hard disk drive
• atari st
• cmos settings
• mid 1970s
• apple ii
• cd roms
• shugart
• design challenge
• mm 5
• floppy disks

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Floppy Disk, Floppy Disk

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 (nonremovable type of) hard disk drive. Invented by IBM, floppy disks in 8-inch (200 mm), 5-inch (133.35 mm), and 3-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. While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy industrial computer equipment, The Floppy Disk Drive Engineering Design Challenge SSD to FDD; see http://jimwarholic.com/2008/12/floppy-disk-drive-engineering-design.php they have now been largely superseded by USB flash drives, External Hard Drives, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, and memory cards (such as Secure Digital).

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, MSX 2/2+, Amstrad CPC, Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3, Commodore 64/128, Atari ST, Amiga and IBM PC compatibles, to distribute software, transfer data, and create backups.

Customized Windows XP install CDs can be made with programs such as nLite. This requirement was only dropped with the introduction of Windows Vista in 2007. Windows XP and Vista still require floppy disks to be able to create a password reset disk for user accounts. Most PC motherboards will still attempt to boot from a floppy drive, depending on CMOS settings.

Stevens, 1981 - "This drive, with a capacity of 243 Kbytes" |align="right"|3.1 Mbits unformatted|-|8-inch - DSSD IBM 43FD / Shugart 850|align="center"|1976|align="right"|500.5 The IBM Diskette and Diskette Drive , James T. Engh, 1981 - "This would double the capacity to approximately 0.5 megabytes (Mbytes)." |align="right"|6.2 Mbits unformatted|-|5-inch (35 track) Shugart SA 400|align="center"|1976 "In September, 1976, the first minifloppy disk drive was introduced by Shugart Associates." |align="right"|89.6 kB Shugart SA 400 Datasheet Formatted with 256 byte sectors and 10 sectors per track the capacity is 89.6 Kbytes (256 x 10 x 35 = 89,600) |align="right"|110 kB|-|8-inch DSDD IBM 53FD / Shugart 850|align="center"|1977|align="right"|980 (CP/M) - 1200 (MS-DOS FAT)|align="right"|1.2 MB|-|5-inch DD|align="center"|1978|align="right"|360 or 800|align="right"|360 KB|-|3-inch HP single sided|align="center"|1982|align="right"| 280|align="right"|264 kB|-|3-inch|align="center"|1982 December 1982: Amdek releases the Amdisk-3 Micro-Floppy-disk Cartridge system.

By the mid-1990s the 5-inch drives had virtually disappeared as the 3-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk. One of the chief advantages of the 3-inch disk, besides its smaller size which allows it to fit in a shirt pocket, is its plastic case, which gives it good protection from dust, liquids, fingerprints, scratches, sunlight, warping, and other environmental risks.

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. 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.

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. Only Windows Vista, using Windows PE, Gnu/Linux, OpenSolaris, BSD, and other Unix type operating systems allow drivers to be loaded from media other than floppies during installation. 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. Furthermore, if BIOS update fails or BIOS just became corrupted somehow, bootblocks are often able to perform emergency recovery of main BIOS part only from floppy drives due to minimal code size of bootblock (often just 8Kb) so even as of 2009 floppy drives are still sometimes needed to perform BIOS recovery after failed BIOS update attempt. 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.

Also, in a non-network environment, floppies were once the primary means of transferring data between computers (sometimes jokingly referred to as Sneakernet or Frisbeenet ). 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, even though such disks are obsolete.

Source: Wikipedia > Floppy Disk