How Are Floppy Drives Categorized?
Learning how computer components and peripherals can be categorized is useful if you want to expand your computer expertise. The floppy disk is one of the oldest storage formats, first released in the 1970s; it has since been surpassed by storage media with more space. Floppy disks can be categorized by a number of minor factors, but the defining categorization is the physical size of the floppy disk. Floppy disks reduced in size since their inception.
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Instructions
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Measure the disk to see if it is just over 8 inches in size; 8-inch floppy disks were the released first and are the oldest category of disk. All 8-inch disks were released in the 1970s. They had between 80KB and 1,200KB of disk space available on them.
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Check if the disk is 5.25 inches in size. These disks were available throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. These had between 140KB and 1,182KB of space on them. These were far more popular than the initial release of disks and popularized the format.
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See if the disk is 3.5 inches in size. These are the most common type of floppy disk, and the most recently released. Production began in the early 1980s at 280KB in space. In 1987, the 1.44MB 3.5-inch floppy disk was introduced. This is the most common and popular floppy disk of all time. During the next 10 years, other 3.5-inch floppy disks were created, some with space capacities up to 240MB. These later floppy disks were expensive and were soon surpassed by blank CD media.
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Tips & Warnings
Floppy disk sizes are given according to the size of the actual disk, rather than casing, so allow a little extra size.
References
- Photo Credit floppy disk image by cegli from Fotolia.com
