Floppy Disk and their types
Floppy Disk
It is used to store small amount of data in the computer and retrieve the data. The floppy disk was first introduced by IBM (International Business Machine) in 1972 AD. It consisted of a magnetic material coated on a circular disc of eight inches in diameter and placed in the cover of a hardboard. It could be folded easily. Due to this property of flexibility, it got its name floppy. This floppy could store only 1 megabyte of data. Later floppies with a size of 5.25 inches (in diameter), 3.5 inches in size (in diameter) were introduced. The medium for storing data in floppy disk is made of Mylar or VinyiPlastic. It is round in shape, which is coated with a magnetic material (iron oxide) on one or both surfaces, due to which data can be stored on that surface. If the coating of magnetic material is on one side then it is called Single Sided Floppy and if it is coated on both sides then it is called Double Sided Floppy. This medium is kept in a plastic cover only to protect it from dust and heat. On the surface of each ploppy there are 'tracks' in the form of concentric circular rings. Their number is different in different types of floppy. The number of tracks in MiniFloppy ranges from 35 to 40 and in Micro Floppy from 40 to 80. These tracks are divided into small pieces, which are called 'sectors'. Floppies can be classified on the basis of their size and storage capacity. On the basis of size, floppy is divided into mini floppy and micro floppy and on the basis of storage capacity they are divided into Single Density, Double Density and High Density. Density is the number of tracks present in the unit area.
Floppies can be divided into the following parts on the basis of data storage capacity
( i) Single Sided - Single Density
( ii ) Single Sided - Double Density
( iii ) Single Sided - High Dersity
( iv ) Double Sided - Single Density
( v ) ) Double Sided - Double Density
( vi ) Double Sided High Density
0 Comments