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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Floppy disks are an outdated form of magnetic data storage.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
Data is written to and read from a floppy disk via a magnetic mechanism in the floppy drive?
Data written on or retrieved from a floppy:
The floppy cover has a window with a spring-loaded metal shutter. The shutter is pushed back which uncovers the window when it is inserted into the disk drive. The drive rotates the disk inside its protective covering at a speed of 300 rpm. Read/write head contacts its exposed surface through the window.Recording is done magnetically in concentric circles called tracks. Data is read or written serially in bits on the tracks within a given sector.
Microcomputer disks use sector organization to store and retrieve data. In sector organization, the recording surface is divided into pie-shaped sectors. The number of sectors depends on the density of the disk. Each sector is assigned a unique number. The sector number and track number are all that are needed for address on a particular disk-face surface. The disk address represents the physical location of a particular file or set of data. An access arm containing the read/write head is moved under program control to the appropriate track. Data are read or written when a sector containing the desired data passes under the read/write head.
By Khushal Khan Nasar......
What is the most common cable used today for connecting a hard drive to the motherboard?
There are different interfaces of which hard drives can be connected to the motherboard of computers.
ATA- More commonly ATA-133, the newest version not compatible with ATA-100(phased out) Typically this setup uses a Ribbon cable, however there are "Round" cables that have been made to reduce the turbulence and promote airflow inside the cases. These drives typically do not spin faster than 7,200 RPMS.
SATA- Serial ATA, uses a thin small cable, typically red. This is the first version, and finding hardware that SATA I is difficult. these drives typicall do not spin faster than 7,200 RPMS
SATA II - AKA SATA 3.0 GB, Uses an identical cable, but transfers data much more quickly. Most hard drives and computer accessories that use SATA are SATA II. Typically SATA II is backwards compatible with SATA I. These drives are currently capable of spinning to a maximum of 10,000 RPMS
SATA III - AKA SATA 6GB/s, use a similar cable but transfers data at twice the rate of SATA II and four times the rate of SATA (first version). SATA III is also backwards compatible. In order to take full advantage of the SATA III technology it is necessary to have a SATA III motherboard, cable and HDD.
SCSI- Pronounced "SKUZZY" a high speed interface typically only used on High end workstations and servers. Has high bandwidth and uses ribbon cables similar in look to ATA, but has more pins and a different connector. Older versions for SCSI required "terminators" on the empty connectors however they are becomming less prevalent and are typically not used on the current SCSI 320 Format. These drives are typically the most expensive and rotate the fastest typically 15,000 RPM's
Mainly lack of capacity. A floppy disk is usually 1.44 MB. Modern flash drives, hard drives, etc. are in the gigabytes and terabytes ! You can still use a floppy drive (I have a USB external floppy drive), but it will become more difficult to get new floppy disks as manufacturers abandon a rather antiquated media.
What is the difference between 2-HD and 2-DD floppy?
There have been three formats of 3 1/2" Floppy disk: - 3½-inch HP (single sided) - from 1982 - 280KB - 264KB Formatted Storage Capacity - 3½-inch DD (double sided) - from 1984 - 1 MB - 720KB Formatted Storage Capacity - 3½-inch HD (double sided) - from 1987 - 1.44 MB - 1440KB Formatted Storage Capacity
How many documents can a 1.4mb floppy disc hold?
It depends on the software program, compression utilities and formatting.
How many type written pages 8.5 by 11 can fit in a floppy disk?
Considering you have filled the page with 44,100 characters, that would make the file approx. 24kb. You then can attach 61 pages to the floppy.
The A: and B: drives on a desktop computer are reserved in the BIOS for floppy disk drives. As most computers only come with one floppy disk drive only the A: drive will be visible in file explorer. If a second floppy disk drive is fitted then both A: and B: drives will be visible. Computers used to have a B: drive. It was the second floppy drive. Since people no longer copy from one floppy to another, the B: drive (and on some newer models the A: drive) has become obsolete.
Can a magnet erase the memory of a CD or floppy disk?
The best way to clean a floppy disk is with an electromagnet not a regular magnet. If you can put it to the back of a large speaker when the speaker is turned on, that should work. On the other hand, if you wait about 10 years, that will also do it.
How many types of hard disk formatting do you have?
Wrong. those were brands. Disk drive types are
1. Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (PATA) commonly known as IDE Integrated Drive electronics.
2. Serial ATA (SATA)
3. Small Computer System Interface (SCSI)
4. Solid State Drives (SSD)
Floppy drives are not as necessary as they once were because the industry is moving toward storage media that can hold more data, such as CDs.
The CD-ROM or optical drive. Floppy disk drives have stagnated in development; any off-the-shelf drive these days will support the highest commonly available capacity, 1.44 MB. Many people these days don't even use floppy disks.
Which type of disk store up to 17 gigabytes of data?
No idea. A double-layer DVD can store up to 8 GB (too little), a Blu-Ray disc can store up to 50 GB (too much), a standard hard drive can currently store up to 2 TB (2000 GB, way too much).
I can't really think of any storage medium with an upper limit of 17 GB.
Identify three actions one should undertake to ensure that damage is not done to a floppy disk?
three action ot ensure that a floppy disk is not damge
Can you spread computer viruses through floppy disks?
If you find a computer with a floppy disk port, then yes.
How many internal hard disk drive connectors on PC?
It depends on your motherboard. You'll need to refer to your motherboard specifications to find out how many (and of what type) hard disks you will be able to connect internally.
What is the first sector on a floppy disk called?
It is just like every other sector on a hard disk, an area to store data, except for the fact that it contains the MBR (Master Boot Record).
Why is hard disk is popular than floppy disk?
Hard disk is more popular than floppy disk because hard disk can store huge amount of data in term of mega byte to giga byte. It stores the data safely compared to floppy disk. External hard disk are portable so they can transfer the data from one computer to another . But floppy disk has low capacity and are vey slow compared to hard disk . It can be easily damaged when exposed to heat and dust. Files can be easily corrupted and data transfer rate is slow compared to hard disk. Nowadays, computer are built without floppy drives which is needed to read floppy disks.
What are other drives are there besides floppydisk?
Computer drives can include:
- An internal hard drive
- Sometimes, a "slave" drive which is a second internal drive or a partition on the primary hard drive
External Drives consist of:
- floppy disk drive
- CD drive
- DVD drive (the CD/DVD are usually one drive)
- External Desk Drive - a unit that connects by USB Cable to the computer and acts as a secondary drive; often used for storage.
- A "thumb" or stick drive - inserts into a USB port and used for storage.
How do you turn off write protect on a pen drive?
There may be a switch on the side of it which you can change to turn write-protect on or off. If not then read the manual that came with it or check the manufacturer's website
is this going to add?
To disable writing access to USB drives and make all USB drives has only read-only access, follow these steps:
- Run Registry Editor (regedit).
- Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
- Create a New Key named as StorageDevicePolicies.
- Highlight StorageDevicePolicies, and then create a New DWORD (32-bit) Value named as WriteProtect.
- Double click on WriteProtect, and set its value data to 1.
Some operating system has already have this StorageDevicePolicies in their system.
To revert and remove the blocked write access to USB drivers, just delete the StorageDevicePolicies registry key, or delete the WriteProtect registry entry, or change the value data for WriteProtect to 0.
How much do a floppy disk drive cost?
Floppy disks are seldom sold individually. Depending on the bulk number you purchase, the price per floppy is generally $0.75 to $1.00 USD.
No. An internal floppy drive is connected into the motherboard. It cannot be disconnected from the mother board and function as an external device. However you can buy the external floppy drive and then plug it into a USB port on your computer.
If you want to have a floppy drive work externally, you need to buy one that is designed to work with USB connection to your computer.
Floppy disk is 1.47 MB but shows 1.44 MB of space... This is due to an inconsistency with measurement standards; specifically that of decimal (base 10) versus binary (base 2). 1,440 kB is actually ~1.47 MB because there are 1,024 bytes in a kB; 1,440 kB x 1024 1,474,560 bytes ~1.47 MB.
Sidenote:
One might think that the 1.47 MB is indeed the "raw" capacity as opposed to the "formatted" capacity. And, that the formatting itself requires 0.03MB which is used on Windows for the File Allocation Table or FAT.
But...
An unformatted 3½" floppy drive is actually 2.0 MB, so the 1.44-1.47 discrepancy has nothing to do with formatting overhead.
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