Floppy Disk and Zip Disk Drives

Computer Hard Drives - External Hard Drive - Hard Drive - Floppy Disk - Hard Disk - Zip Disk - Floppy - Data Storage - Storage 

Floppy Disk

A floppy disk is a magnetic storage media. The floppy disk is a plastic disk coated on both side with magnetic recording material (ferrous oxide). It is also called simply a diskette. IBM invented the floppy disk in 1972. The size of the first floppy disk was 8-inch and had flexible plastic cover. Next generation of floppies was 5.25 inches disk. Today, the standard floppy disk size of 3.5 inch and has a rigid plastic cover. The size of disk refers to the diameter of disk and not refers to the storage capacity. The high-density disks are smaller in size but larger in storage capacity. The storage capacity of floppy disk is very low (i.e. maximum storage capacity is 1.44 MB).

Typically, floppy disks are used to transfer small files to and from personal computers. Floppy disk is also used in some digital cameras to store pictures. Today, floppy disks are not widely used as they were ten years ago because of their low storage capacity. The maximum age of floppy disk is about 7 years.

Today, most commonly used floppy disk is 3.5 inch diameter diskette. It is also referred to as Micro Floppy Diskette. It is enclosed in a hard plastic jacket. The read/write window of micro disk is always closed with a Metal Shutter. The shutter automatically opens when the disk is inserted into the disk drive. The micro disk also has a write-protected notch at one of its corners. A write protected-notch is a small opening that has a tab you slides to cover the notch. If the write protected-notch is opened, the floppy drive cannot write data on the disk. However, in this case data can be read only from the disk. To write data on the disk, the write protected-notch must be closed.

Floppy Disk Drives

Floppy disk drive is a hardware component used to write and read data to and from the floppy disk. Personal computers and laptop computers have a floppy disk drive installed inside the system unit. Some computers use external floppy disk drive, in which the drive is a separate device with a cable that plugs into a port on the system unit. If a computer has one floppy disk drive, it is named as drive A (In case of two Floppy drives, one is named as drive A and second as drive B) by operating system. Most standard floppy disks today are high density. The computer must have the high-density floppy disk drive to access the high-density disks. The high-density disk drive can also access the lower density disks.

The floppy disk drive includes a motor that rotates the disk on a spindle. It also contains write/read head that writes and reads data to and from the disk when disk rotates. The floppy disk rotates at approximately 300 revolutions per minute. Most floppy disk drives have light emitting diodes (LED) that emits light when drive is accessing the floppy disk. You should not remove a floppy disk when the LED is on.

Zip Disk :

A Zip disk is a type of portable magnetic media. Its storage capacity is about from 100 MB to 800 MB. It is used to back up important data. ZIP disk is similar to floppy disk but its storage capacity is about 100 (or more) times greater than floppy disk. It is also more reliable storage medium than floppy disk. Like floppy disk, the data can be easily transferred from one computer to another by using Zip disk.

A Zip disk drive is used to write and read data to and from the Zip disk. The Zip disk drive cannot read data from floppy disk. It is not commonly used in personal computers. Most of the users use the external Zip drive, which can be connected to the USB port or parallel port on the system unit to write and read data to and from the Zip disk.