These were capable of 1.44MB and remain the standard in floppy disks until this day (2002), despite successful attempts to put 2.88MB on a disk via enhanced formatting techniques. However, there was soon a new standard - High Density - represented by a human-readable stylized 'HD' in the top right of the disk and a machine-readable hole in the bottom left corner, with the write-protect catch remaining in the bottom-right corner. Borrowing from the advances made in the three-inch disks, as well as enhanced methods of manufacture, they were able to contain 720kB of data in their first standard, Double Sided Double Density. The much later Quad Density disk provided 1.2 megabytes of information on one disk.īut by this time, the 3½" disk was arriving. These disks were also flexible, and were usually contained within individual paper envelopes. Later machines using two disk drives enabled the user to leave the operating system disk in one drive, and only change the application disk. Since these machines had no hard disk, the operating system would have to be loaded on one disk, then removed and replaced by another disk containing the application. Small enough to fit in a desktop unit, the usual incarnation offered 360kB of storage space. The first floppy disk that was used in home machines was the 5¼". However, they had a small form factor and a rigid case with a slidable write-protect catch, features which would be seen later in the 3½" disk. They remained expensive and did not become standardized. Amstrad incorporated a 3-inch disk drive into their CPC664 and CPC6128 models, among other manufacturers. Home computer manufacturers, who had previously been using tape (compact cassette) to save data too, saw the possibilities for this medium. The reason for the name 'floppy' was that the exterior casing was only soft flexible plastic, leaving them vulnerable to manhandling. Their capacity was extremely limited, by today’s standards, with 160 kilobytes available. These large disks predate the desktop machine, and were mainly used for transferring data between mainframe machines. The original floppy disk was the eight-inch. A typical 3.5in Floppy disk internal drive.
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