Define Floppy Drive
Floppy drives are drives used in desktop computers to store information of floppy disks. Floppy disks are for small amounts of data (up to 1.44 megabytes). The floppy disk is made of plastic, aluminum, and a piece of film.
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History
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Floppy drives were first introduced in computers in 1971. The disk system was designed by Alan Shubert at IBM. At the time, the disks were only able to hold 100 kilobytes of information.. Currently, floppy disks can hold 1.44 megabytes of data.
Function
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Floppy drives work by storing data on floppy disks. A disk is inserted into the drive and a special magnetic arm writes the data onto the film inside the disk. To protect the data, a thin cover on a spring system is placed on the top of the disk.
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Size
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The first floppy drive was 5.25 inches in size. The large size was due in part to the storage capacity of the film used to hold data. Currently, floppy disks are 3.5 inches in size. Due to increased technology, the size was able to reduce and the storage was able to increase.
Types
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There are two types of floppy drives: traditional drives and zip drives. Zip drives are a proprietary technology made by Iomega that store larger amounts of data, using a similar technology to the floppy drive.
Warning
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Floppy drives are no longer a recommended method of data storage. Because the maximum capacity of the disk is 2 megabytes, they do not offer enough space for most files or modern-day applications.
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