Information About Floppy Disks
In the early days of personal computers, floppy disks drove the machines and provided a place to store programs and documents. But as storage technology advanced, floppy disks were replaced by hard drives, USB mass-storage devices, flash drives and online storage. In 2010, Sony--the largest manufacturer of floppy disks--announced they will phase out the old disks.
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Early Floppies
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Early floppies had a diameter of eight inches, or about the size of a long-play record album--another extinct species. By the 1980s, disks were down to 5 1/4 inches in diameter, but they kept the same design--a disk encased in a bendable plastic envelope. These one-sided disks carried a double-density capacity of 360 kilobytes. Later, disks had a hard plastic housing with a spring-loaded cover to protect the medium, had two usable sides and a capacity of 1.44 megabytes. These newer disks had a diameter of 3.5 inches, making them small enough to carry in a shirt pocket.
Shelf Life
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The earlier floppy disks had little protection against fingerprints that could damage the metallic surface of the disk. They were also susceptible to magnets, dust, heat and being bent. The newer 3-1/2-inch disks were sturdier but still prone to damage. They were cheap but had a life span of about two years.
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Primary Storage
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In the early days of computers, floppy disks handled all data storage needs. The entire operating system would run on one disk and load itself into memory. To run a program, you often had to put in the program disk, swapping out the system disk. Files may be stored on yet another disk, making for a great deal of disk swapping.
Hard Drives
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The first hard drives allowed the computer user to put his system files and programs on the larger-capacity internal disk, though data files were often kept on floppy disks for portability. Most computers still had a floppy disk bay to accommodate either the larger 5-1/4-inch disks or the smaller 3.5-inch disks.
Storage Evolution
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With the advent of rewritable CD-ROM drives, though, floppy drives fell out of favor. More computers were shipped with the CD-ROM drive and without any floppy disk drive. Later, USB thumb drives and larger, portable USB hard drives threatened to make the old floppy disk extinct, and online "cloud" storage cast an even greater threat to the iconic floppy disk.
Reading Your Old Floppies
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Some computer users still may have documents or programs on floppy disk. The only real way to read or reclaim these files is to pick up a floppy drive and install it on the computer.
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References
- Computerhope: Floppy Disk
- Intel: Introduction To the Controller
- Community College of Allegheny County: Storage Media and Drives
- Bowling Green State University: Parts of the Floppy Disk
- http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:QcCciorPWFgJ:www.bgsu.edu/cconline/sammons/floppy.pdf+floppy+disk+components&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESj-UXRInBTAJlJ7aJTohYYh9bzVqw2d_6NvwLVVTvR5j_dUaLA3lqULPpDqjBmLB22w1B5h25lsXlLt9AXT1mQEivpefLSosVcLHOQqmjmt0judxeUHX0wH8G7aZTEMtLHQx3f3&sig=AHIEtbSsAZE9p-yeFjJGRSziOQBEVSBzWQ
Resources
- Photo Credit floppy disks image by Christopher Nolan from Fotolia.com
