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Floppy Disk Drives

Floppy disks are an outdated form of magnetic data storage. Questions about floppy disk drives and floppy disks themselves belong here.

768 Questions

How can you tell that a particular ribbon cable should only be used to connect a floppy drive?

The connectors on the ends of the cable are a different size than the connectors for a standard IDE device like a Hard Drive or CD rom. You should also notice that there is a twist in the cable between two of the connectors.

What does formatting a floppy or hard drive do?

The headers on your file allocation table files are replaced with a special character. This character tells the operating system not toread any files still on the disk. At this point, files can still be recovered. Only if the files are written over will the files be altered and rendered unreadable. If an algorithm is used to write over the files, it may be necessary to write more than once. Otherwise, a decryption algorithm can be used and the files reconstructed.

How do you handle a floppy disk?

It really depends on the extent of the damage. You have to keep in mind that a floppy disk is a magnetic media, and hence the data stored on it is extremely vunerable. My general opinion is that you probably wouldn't be able to repair a physical damage, and hence, you'd end up losing all the data that's on it. Sometimes, if the damage is minimal you may be able to retrieve some data by using file-undeleting/retrieving software. But, this again is a matter of luck.

How many floppy drives can connect to one floppy drive cable inside a computer case?

Normally a floppy drive interface can be used to connect two floppy disk drives. However this may vary from system to system, some systems may also have two interfaces. It may be necessary to purchase a floppy drive cable with two connection headers.

What are the parts of diskette?

The Drive
The major parts of a FDD include:

  • Read/Write Heads: Located on both sides of a diskette, they move together on the same assembly. The heads are not directly opposite each other in an effort to prevent interaction between write operations on each of the two media surfaces. The same head is used for reading and writing, while a second, wider head is used for erasing a track just prior to it being written. This allows the data to be written on a wider "clean slate," without interfering with the analog data on an adjacent track.
  • Drive Motor: A very small spindle motor engages the metal hub at the center of the diskette, spinning it at either 300 or 360 rotations per minute (RPM).
  • Stepper Motor: This motor makes a precise number of stepped revolutions to move the read/write head assembly to the proper track position. The read/write head assembly is fastened to the stepper motor shaft.
  • Mechanical Frame: A system of levers that opens the little protective window on the diskette to allow the read/write heads to touch the dual-sided diskette media. An external button allows the diskette to be ejected, at which point the spring-loaded protective window on the diskette closes.
  • Circuit Board: Contains all of the electronics to handle the data read from or written to the diskette. It also controls the stepper-motor control circuits used to move the read/write heads to each track, as well as the movement of the read/write heads toward the diskette surface.


FROM: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/floppy-disk-drive2.htm

What are the advantages of a floppy disk?

Good to store some kind of documents because they can be edited, deleted and have a cool appearance. Moreover you can attach a label to easily find the files. Not proper for images due to their small capacity. But the recorder/reader must be of good quality not to cause breakdowns.

How data is organized on a magnetic tape disk?

1. When data is recorded onto magnetic tape, it is written in blocks with inter-block gaps between them. The rate at which data is written or read determines how the tape drives will have to cope with the rate at which data goes on and off the tape as well as the rate at which data is supplied to or demanded from the host.

What is maximum storage capacity of a CD?

The maximum storage capacity of a CD-ROM is determined by the size and intended storage of the CD itself. The majority of CD-ROMs sold today are 74 minute and 80 minute discs, the 74 minute disc is rated to hold 650 MB but can actually hold up to 681 MB. The 80 minute disc is rated to hold 700 MB but can hold up to 737 MB.

How do you partition a floppy disk?

First, make sure you have backed everything up and have nothing on the PC you don't want to lose. The FDISK command will overwrite the entire partition table and render everything on the hard drive useless. Then you start FDisk from the console mode, not within Windows, and then you delete the existing partitions if you don't want them, and then start over with partitions sized to what you want.

Do keep in mind that for most cases, you should use a Windows-based partition editor such as EaseUS Partition Master. They are easier to use and lets you configure existing partitions without deleting partitions first.

Can i use a floppy disk in a zip drive?

No. Zip drives cannot read floppy disks, and cannot be used on a traditional floppy controller.

What is a different between the save as and save commands?

if you just save something like a word document and you just click save it wont save the word document in the location you want to save it to where as if you click save as you choose a specific location to save a document.

What is the speed of rotating floppy disk drive?

The speed varies from the size of the floopy disk.

on average it tends to be quite slow. (:

How do you make a disk write protected?

For a CD-ROM to become write-protected, it must either be full, or have it's sessions closed so that no further data can be written to the disk. Here is a brief explanation of disc sessions:

Data burned to a CD or DVD is laid out in sessions. These sessions are composed of a lead-in which holds the table of contents for the disc. Next is the lead out. A blank CD or DVD can only acquire 99 tracks per session. Sometimes multiple sessions are required to burn all content to DVD or CD media. In these cases, the lead in contains an "address" or directions that clue the new session in on the previous burn session history.

So in summary, the odds are that your disc can no longer have information added to it.

Why are floppy disks much less popular as a portable storage system and what replaced them?

They have been significantly succeded by smaller, more rigid forms of data storage media with greater protection and storage capacity.

For more information about the history of floppy disks and storage devices, see Related Links below this box.

What do you do if the message 'windows 98 has detected drive c does not contain a valid fat or fat 32 partition' appears when booting from a floppy?

This usually occurs after formatting or putting a new hard drive into a system and needs to be fidisked. To do this get to a dos prompt usuing a bootable floppy, type in fdisk and partition the hard drive using the on screen options (create new partition)(fat32 for windows 95/98/me ntfs for nt/xp/2000)

How do you dispose of a large box of assorted computer parts including hard drives floppy drives computer cases and circuit boards?

First, you can A. do physical damage to the drive so no info can be taken or B. wipe the hard drive so there is nothing on it (Google how to wipe a hard drive).

Now, go to a website like Earth911.com and enter your zip code then click search. Then, listings of places where you can bring your hard drive or circuit boards will pop up, click on one of those.

Finally, it should show you an address where you can bring your electronics to get properly disposed.

Explain about the storage capacity of computer?

Currently, inside a regular desktop PC the largest unit of size would be 1 TB (1000 GB), and with this unit it becomes very difficult to completely fill the storage device.

However, potentially, the largest is the yobibyte, which is a whopping 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits of data. Basically, if scaled down into human language it would be the information capacity of the observational universe, meaning every bit of known knowledge ever recorded, translated into every language and coppied 10,000,000 times over.

How many sectors are there in a 3 12 inch high-density floppy disk?

For a standard IBM formatted double sided, high density 3.5" floppy diskette, the following properties apply:

  • Data is recorded on two sides of the disk
  • Each side has 80 tracks
  • Each track has 18 sectors
  • Each sector holds 512 bytes (0.5 KB)
So each floppy disk holds 2880 sectors (2 * 80 * 18), which total to 1440 KB.

While often labeled as 1.44MB, this is not an accurate statement of a floppy disk's capacity. This is due to the confusion between binary and decimal, where K can be 1,024 or 1,000 and M can be 1,048,576 or 1,000,000.

If calculated completely in binary, a floppy would hold 1.40625 MB, while if calculated completely in decimal, it would hold 1.47456 MB. Obviously marketing wouldn't like to use either of these numbers!

But by doing the first half of the calculation in binary (getting 1440 KB), and then treating that as a decimal number and incorrectly converting it to 1.44 MB, you get an easy to read number.

What is the purpose of the intervertebral disk?

To make our backbones more flexible. In other words, to allow various movement. Besides, these discs can absorb shock to prevent our backbone from damaged.

What format was used for movies of the 1910s ans1920's?

The format for movies in the 1910's and 1920's was black and white silent films. No sound, no color. It was actually a reel of film.

How does music get stored on a compact disk?

Data or music at the lowest level can all be represented by bits.Bits are either 0 or 1. The 0 bit is represented by burning a pit on the CD surface using a laser. The information on a standard CD is encoded as a spiral track of pits moulded into the top of the polycarbonate layer.The areas between pits are known as lands (1 bit). Each pit is approximately 100 nm deep by 500 nm wide, To grasp the scale of the pits and land of a CD, if the disc is enlarged to the size of a stadium, a pit would be approximately the size of a grain of sand. The spiral begins at the center of the disc and proceeds outwards to the edge, which allows the different size formats available. If you find this info useul Please vote!!!