Talk:Floppy disk

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Floppy disk appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on May 13, 2004.

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Some old or resolved discussions from Dec 2005 and earlier are archived here.

[edit] Archival, lifetime, refreshing

I think it would be a really good idea to include some information about how long floppies last, how often they should be refreshed etc. Cached 06:45, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "1 MB = 1,000 KB for floppy storage"

Calling 1440 KB 1.44 MB is a simple error, nothing more. Stating "1 MB = 1,000 KB for floppy storage" is unnecessary. Do we say "pi = 3 for biblical history"? Or "2 + 2 = 5 for confused kindergarteners"? No, we just say that someone made an error. The table at the top of the article is broken at this time. --Yath 01:28, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

it's not nice i agree but calling it a mistake when every single manufacturer that sells the things uses it doesn't seem right either.

the fact is mega=kilo*kilo and kilo has two different meanings in computing. If you think of megabyte as kilo-kilo byte and understand that one of the kilos comes from the arbitary measures of the particular disk size and the other from twice the fundamental sector size it makes perfect sense Plugwash 02:32, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It makes sense only when considered an error. I'm going to remove it from the article. --Yath 05:59, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Like it or not it is the normal way of reffering to those disk sizes i've changed the body of the table to use kilobytes only and put a somewhat reworded note at the bottom what do you think of it now? Plugwash 12:53, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A 3/4 inch pipe has no dimension that is 3/4 of an inch. A 2 x 5 at the lumber yard is no-where near 2" by 4" in section. "Trade" sizes may not match physical dimensions of products but are a useful short-cut for product identification. --Wtshymanski 20:05, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ahh! Your all wrong! 1mb is 1024 kb or 2^10. Definatly worth mentioning.--Ewok Slayer 16:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 800kB 3.5" Macintosh disks?

This site lists some early Macintosh computers (Mac Plus, Mac SE) as using "800kB" 3.5" floppy disks. They don't seem to be mentioned in the article (the only 800 kB 3.5" disks mentioned are for the Commodore 128). If anyone knows how they fit in, please add them to the article. —Steven G. Johnson 15:10, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

probablly a format for DD disks The pc formats were quite conservative compared to other formats around at the time. The archimedies version of ADFS also did 800K on dd disks. User:Plugwash

The Mac is mentioned in the "Using the disk space efficiently" section. "400 KB per side". The first version was single sided. Mirror Vax 17:23, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Applie II, Commodore, Victor Sirius 9000, and classic Macs did not use MFM for recording on diskette but rather one or another type of GCR - a different way of writing data to the diskette. A GCR format allowed a bit more data on a diskette but was incompatible with MFM-only data separators. Later Mac's had both types of data separator installed so that they could read both their own and PC-compatible disk formats. --Wtshymanski 20:29, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Although it's a common belief, it's not true that GCR provided more storage - just the opposite. GCR formats that allow two 1s (transitions) in a row run at half the clock speed of MFM, which doesn't allow two 1s in a row. Thus MFM is the more efficient format. Mirror Vax 20:51, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Would it be more nearly correct to say that GCR gave more data on a disk than FM (what we used to call single-density)? And 800 K is more than 720 K, is it not? In the CP/M days many machines put 390K on what a PC formatted as a 360K diskette, so the difference is not huge anyway. I understood GCR was picked for the Apple II because it didn't need a very complex data separator...I wonder why GCR didn't become more popular. It was a great drawback for some people who only had GCR data separators on their machines because they could never exchange disks with people locked into FM or MFM. (The standard IBM PC disk controller couldn't do FM (single density) disks, either.) --Wtshymanski 23:57, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, GCR is superior to FM, but inferior to MFM. The Mac got 800K because of the variable motor speed. On the inner tracks, the Mac only had 8 sectors - less than the standard 9 for the PC. The Mac controller is just a single-chip version of the Apple II controller. This article explains FM/MFM: [1] - Mirror Vax 01:25, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

btw the acorn archimedies also did 800K on dd floppies (and 1600K on HD floppies in its last incarnations) and i'm pretty damn sure that didn't use a special drive of any kind. Plugwash 15:06, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

The Amiga did 880K on DD and 1.76M on HD floppies, you could just buy DOS formatted ones and reformat them to work with the amiga. Again no reference to this in the article David Griffith 22:46, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

The original System and applications software diskettes shipped with the original Macintosh had slightly rounded ends in the head access slots under the protective cover. I saw that several years ago when looking at an original Macintosh (Just Macintosh, no 128K designation since the 512K model didn't exist yet) being sold at an auction. If someone could gget a picture of that for the Macintosh section it'd be a nice addition.

The Macintosh's 800kB disk was a constant linar velocity mechanism, where the drive rotated more quickly when the head was over inner tracks, to keep disk/head velocity constant. This allowed them to write more to a disk.

Actual DD/HD floppy capacities are 1MiB and 2MiB respectively. Only the IBM PCAT's brain-dead floppy disk controller required so much space for formatting metadata that around a third of the disk was lost. Systems with direct hardware level floppy access (NOT a PC) could use much more space, an example is the Amiga which was 880k/1.76MiB by default and had aftermarket filesystem drivers to increase that to 960/1.92MiB, uncompressed and on standard disks.

This article is PC-centric, and has no right to be Wayne Hardman 17:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 3-inch floppies in Smith-Corona word processors

For a short time, Smith-Corona used a 3-inch floppy disk format which was not quite the same as the one used by Amstrad. I don't have much information handy on this, but I do recall the disk being hard plastic, square, and with one corner "cut" diagonally like its 3½ inch cousin, but without a sliding dust cover door. -- Todd Vierling 16:49, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Smith-Corona used a 3"x3" Quick Disk system labeled, DataDisk 2.8", in some of their word processors.

The FDS is a 3"x4" Quick Disk, other MSX/8-bit computer and Midi keyboards presumably use the 3"x3" and Smith Corona uses a 3"x3" but labeled 2.8"

Would like to see a seperate page on Quick Disk just to list all the technical details and various systems that used drive(s) available for each format so as to unclutter & lighten this section but keep the tech specs avail. 66.82.9.60 05:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC) (what's with this thing---can't keep me signed in!??!)

[edit] Grave ambiguities

Measuremente units are still ambiguous in the article. Measurements are given in both traditional and metrical systems, without stating which one is the precise one and which the approximation. Worse, capacity is given in round numbers followed by both decimal and binary units without stating which one is the correct one.

There is a historical aspect on this. At the time of introduction and martketing of these devices the only designation in use was KB (often just K), or MB later on. So for historical reasons it makes sense to use the KB/MB notation. I even believe that the HiFD format was marked as 150/200 MB formats. However, I do agree that the accurate figures should go somewhere. What I propose to do is to introduce a table for each physical format (a single table for all formats would get too big) giving a (hopefully) clear view of the different logical formats available, but use the terms KB and MB consistently throught the prose. Any objections? Frodet 21:40, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I had plannned to include tables like this in the main article. How do the rest of you feel about that? It might be a bit too big....perhaps a separate article?

Table took up too much space and was purged, see Table of 8-inch floppy formats.

DEC RX01 and RX01 formats are ALWAYS single-sided. DEC never offered double-sided 8-inch drives. There were rumors of a double-sided RX03, but it was never available as a product. Some third-parties offered double-sided drives, but when used in a double-sided mode, it was not correct to refer to it as RX01 or RX02 format since such a disk couldn't be read in an RX01 or RX02 drive. --Brouhaha 00:37, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know where I had the original information from. I'll look again, but you are probably correct. --Frodet 10:40, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

It's definately needed but the "Floppy Disk" article is already too long[2]. Create a new page "Floppy Disk Technical Specifications"-??? Maybe look around wikipedia and see how they handled it already, but this content is definately useful to post ASAP. Get David Wilson's data and add it too: http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/GS.WorldView/v1999/May/Table_of_Floppy_Disk_Formats.tx Dcsutherland 06:08, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Encouraged by this, I'll do what you suggest soonish. Thanks. :) --Frodet 10:40, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kilobaud?

I came to the article looking for the standard floppy drive read speed, which the article states as being "500 kilobaud." Kilobaud? This is an article about floppy disks, not RS-232, right? How about using the more modern KB/sec (or even Kb/sec) metric?

That is a figure I found in the famous fdformat floppy disk formatting utility. Along with other parameters, one could choose between two data rates, specified in Baud, 500 KBaud or 250 KBaud for DD drives. The fact that the data is expressed in Baud merely reflects the fact that there is other (non-data) information written on a floppy disk (e.g. sector headers/stops, CRC etc.) that are read and written along with the "real" data. So, the only safe thing to say is that floppy disks read 500 KBaud (or "symbols") out of a floppy disk, whose "conversion" to real data can be tricky and very variable with one's system or floppy's format. Here's a screeshot of fdformat running on my machine, formatting a floppy. The program states it's using a "500 kBaud Data Transer Rate".

Image:Floppy-kbaud.gif EpiVictor 23:33, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

A baud is a signal change per second. Due to the way single-density FM encoding adds clock bits, a 250 Kbps FM data is actually 500 kilobaud on the media. However, it is more difficult to meaningfully measure double density (MFM) encoding rate in kilobaud. Generally it is more appropriate to measure in Kbps, as others have noted. --Brouhaha 00:41, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] more intro

an article this long deserves a far longer intro. you shouldn't open an article like this and instantly get a huge TOC and spec table filling most of the visible screen area. Plugwash 03:50, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Atari ST had 360K 3½ disks

The original version of the Atari 520ST shipped with 360K single-sided 3½ floppy disks in 1985. (It was also not uncommon to format the disks with 10 sectors instead of 9, thereby increasing the capacity to 400K.) I don't see that configuration listed in the main table. – Doug Bell (talk/contrib) 22:26, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No mention of 3.25" Floppies or Drivetek

Back when the small floppy format was being thrashed out, one of the leading contenders was the Shugart/Dysan 3.25" Flex Diskette. Housed in a flexible jacket, it resembles a 5.25" floppy, only smaller--and the hub is a bit different. Like the 5.25" media, it uses an applied tab over a jacket notch for write protection.

Dysan's stock number for these was 802950. I have a photo of a diskette and drive, but I'm very chary about editing an article as big as this one and thoroughly messing things up.

Originally the Sony 3.5" drives (OAD-1) were single-sided, 40 track 600 RPM units--something I didn't see mentioned.

There's also no mention of the Drivetek high-capacity floppies that used a unique 2-motor (coarse and fine) head positioner that used an embedded servo technology on preformatted 5.25" diskettes to pack 160 cylinders per side for about 2.88MB. The drive could also handle normal 40 track 5.25" diskettes. Kaypro put these on the Robie for a short time. Kodak eventually purchased the assets of Drivetek in a bankruptcy sale and for a time, continued with product development to obtain about 6 MB on a floppy.

The problem with the Drivetek drives were that they required a proprietary controller and they were incapable of formatting their own diskettes--one had to purchase rather expensive preformatted ones.

71.36.204.61 09:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)Chuck (http://www.sydex.com)

You appear to have a good understanding of these early formats. Please go ahead and edit: Be bold. The worst that will happen is that your edit will get reverted. You can not mess things up irrecoverable.

Hmmm......Syndex: You did the Teledisk software?

--Frodet 19:00, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Let me get my notes together and I'll give it ago.

How does one edit images into the text? I think it might be valuable to actually show what some of these things look like.

Yeah, Teledisk (and a bunch of other diskette-based stuff) is ours.

71.36.204.61 03:47, 26 January 2006 (UTC)Chuck

Excellent! Images are always nice to illustrate a topic. To embedd an image, you first upload the file using the Upload file link to the left (typically) (or Wikimedia Commons, if you can release you image to a free license - then it will be available to any Wikimedia project). You can look at examples in the articles on how to embed images. If you need help, don't hesitate to ask.

What is the status of Teledisk these days?

--Frodet 22:41, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archaic Technology

Shouldn't there be a section that explains how floppy drive/disk technology is far beyond archaic and how they should all be replaced by something faster, more stabe and data friendly like flash memory cards? ;) 71.112.224.112 04:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that is clearly stated in several sections of the article, but the "legacy" component and their sheer numbers won't make them "die off" so easily, and so far all attempts at forcibly discontinuing/eliminating them were received with skepticism, at best. They are still widely used for moving small files, BIOS updates, emergency recovery boot, and having a spare floppy or two with oneself is a good idea if small data will need to be moved around, especially from places where it's not possible or not easy to use CD-R or even USB disks (and it does happen a lot). EpiVictor 11:29, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The 3.5" disk was designed as metric

The article should more prominently mention that the so-called 3.5" disk was in fact designed purely as metric, but when introduced to Merka, it was renamed (inaccurately, at that) to the 3.5" disk because the importing company thought that no self-respecting Merkin would want to be caught dead anywhere near a pinko communist freedom-hating metric unit. JIP | Talk 17:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

It gets better. When PCs were sold in Europe with 3.5" floppies, they were often advertised as having "88.9 mm drives." Some metric-loving, smelly-cheese-eaten You-row-pe'n did the math to the nearest 100 microns, but couldn't be bothered to slap a ruler on one of them disk critters to see how big it really was (that would be 90 mm). --agr 21:59, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure not pissing off metric hating americans was the real reason? Highlighting the fact it was smaller than the previous standard seems a far more convincing reason to me. Plugwash 22:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, so why is the size of the front of the drive exactly 1" high by 4" wide?

[edit] sector:shift is aka cylinder skew in HDD terms

In the "Ultimate capacity / speed" section, the term "sector:shift" is used several times, and it's the first time I've come across the term. From the description, it sounds identical to parameters known as "cylinder skew" and "head skew" in hard drive parlance.

This would be most appropriately explained at the same time as sector interleaving, another technique used on hard disks in the days when disk controllers were too slow to keep up with spinning media. A comprehensive explanation of interleave and skew would be most appropriate on Disk storage, which is just begging for some good content.

I got my understanding of interleave and skew from an old SpinRite manual, and testing with my speed-demon 8086 revealed that a 3:1 interleave was most efficient on that system. Those were the days! Anyway, the printed manual had some great illustrations, and I wonder if Steve Gibson would give permission to use them.

You are probably right about the synonimity of the terms, it's just that fdformat is the only 0to my knowledge- utility allowing to set that parameter, and it called it, arbitrarily perhaps, sector:shift. If there is a Cylinder skew article or reference, then we should link/wikilink/replace the term. EpiVictor 14:06, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Schenk & Horn CopyStar http://www.sharedirect.com/copystar/ does what they call "sector sliding". It also allows creating formats with extra tracks and/or sectors. It can directly copy Microsoft's DMF disks, but can't copy IBM's 1.7M format as used for distribution media for OS/2 Warp 3.0.

[edit] Current situation update?

Each time I hear floppy disks being called obsolete my back shivers. I live in a country where they are still a necessary accesory in any computer. Other things like CD recorders are just too expensive and only a select few can have them. I'm sure that the same thing must happen in many other countries. Do you think this could be stated in that section?

USB Keys have become relatively cheap. --Disavian 19:30, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

So far, all "calls for obsolescence" have proven to be a bit too early: floppies are still necessary in e.g. emergency boots or BIOS updates (OK, there are CDs and bootable USB keys, but not all computers have support for these (especially bootable USBs) , and not all users know how to make a bootable CD or a bootable USB key). It's not a matter of how cheap USB keys or CDs are, it's that neither of them is guaranteed to be readily available and supported at a legacy device level...yet. EpiVictor 12:00, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Obsolete? I always use floppy disks to record images and documents, a disk requires a case which is hard to carry in a pocket. Anonymous

Another testimony against "floppies obsolete" theories: many small USB devices come with a series of drivers that usually don't exceed 1 MB of disk space, and two different game controllers I recently bought: one is a PSX-Dual Shock USB look-alike for PC (2005), the other a programmable arcade stick by Logic 3 (2006), and both came with their drivers on 3.5" floppies. I've seen similar products using miniCDs, but that proves that floppies aren't dead yet...the power of legacy, I suppose :-) EpiVictor 21:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DMF and other oversize formats

Microsoft's DMF or Distribution Media format is mentioned briefly for its use on the floppy disk version of the original release of Windows 95, but not on the first, bootable disk. Many sets of Win 95 floppies were ruined by a boot sector virus on PCs being upgraded from Windows 3.1x that replaced the special DMF sector zero with a standard, virus infected, 1.44M version. Microsoft did not include a utility with Windows 95 to make backup copies. (I used FDformat and CopyQM to make a backup set to install from. I still have my original OEM Win95 set that has never been used to install from.)

Not mentioned is the "1.7M" format IBM used on some software, notably the floppy disk version of OS/2 Warp 3.0, which came on 20 or more disks. The Warp Connect version had over 30 disks for a complete installation of all features. IBM also included a program to make copies of the disks and the documentation insisted the user first make a backup copy of all the disks before installing OS/2. The utility could also be used to create blank 1.7M disks, which were completely useless due to OS/2 Warp 3.0 not being able to write to the format.

[edit] 5.25 2006

How do I get my (newish) computer to recognize a 5.25 drive? Can I just run 'hardware' detect, or is it more complex than that? -Litefantastic 00:40, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

You are barking up the wrong tree. You must first change your BIOS settings. Then your Windows OS will automagically recognize it. 69.87.194.177 21:02, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

As the anon poster says if your connecting it to the motherboards floppy controller after making sure the drive selects are set up right (most multi floppy cables have a twist in them meaning the jumpers on both drives must be set to drive 0) you need to set the drive types in the bios. Plugwash 01:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

You need one of those 34-pin ribbon cables with three or five plugs on it - that has at least one card-edge connector for the 5¼ drive. The plug(s) on the end is the "A" drive, and the plug(s) in the middle is the "B" drive.

The beauty of the 5-plug cable is that either drive can be A or B as you wish.

Then, as stated above, you must run the BIOS update program (hit <DELETE> or <F1> or whatever just after you turn on the computer) and choose the type of drive that matches what you have plugged in.

That's it. There is nothing to do in Windows. I have just done this successfully to my P4 machine running Windows XP, and my classic 5¼ drive, carved out of a solid billet of metal, works like the day it was made. Better in fact.

Back again. There's one thing that can stop this working - if the jumpers have been changed on the back of the drives. But this unlikely and unusual these days.

Well, lessee. I have the drive, and the cable, and I think I'm going to try tech support next. Of course, the fact that I dropped the drive off a table a while ago may not have helped. -Litefantastic 01:23, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Follow-up: Your information was mostly correct, but the drive thinks its a 3 1/2, not a 5 1/4.

[edit] wallet?

It is weird that this featured article uses the word "wallet" in the first sentence; I have never seen this word used to describe the carrier shell. (It is hard to find a good word, since the old floppies used a thin flexible enclosure, and new ones use a thick hard shell.) 69.87.194.177 21:02, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

How'bout "Exoskeleton"? -Litefantastic 23:03, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disk / Minidisk / Diskette

Back when I was at uni (in Australia) in the early 1980's, 8-inch floppys were known as "MiniDisks" (or "8-inch MiniDisks") which I presume was a trade name. And 5¼" floppys were then known as "diskettes".

The implication being that a full-size floppy in the minds of the manufacturers was bigger than 8 inches.

But this article indicates that the 8-inch floppy was the original - the bigger 12" ones came later.

Doe anyone else remember using 8-inch floppys on (say) the VAX or similar?

To make things more confusing, I'll let you know I have a box of old 5'1/4" disks labelled as "Mini Disks". "Diskette" on the other hand is a very common and generic name, and was never linked to only 1 kind of disk, from what I know...the "Mini" prefix could have come, however, from a comparison with larger, not necessarily removable drives, like primitive hard disks or even vinyl records. EpiVictor 13:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Typical hard disks of the 1970's were 14 inches. Microcomputers in the late 1970's to early 1980's, if they had disk drives at all, typically used 8-inch floppys. The first versions of CP/M, the UCSD p-System, etc. all came on 8-inch floppys. --Rick Sidwell 00:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, I'm pretty sure the orignal FD introduced by IBM was called the "Diskette." It may have been trademarked. The term "Minifloppy" was used and trademarked by Shugart Associates when they invented the 5.25" form factor. My guess is the rest of the industry then adopted Minidisk to avoid IBM and Shugart. The various form factors competeing for the next generation were generically called micro-Floppies until the industry standardized on what we today know as the 3.5" FD. For some reason Seagate then introduced its 5.25" HDD as the micro-Winchester but that term never took off.

BTW, there were a considerable number of 8" HDD's used on Microcomputers of the late 1970's and early 1980's - nothing by today's standards but large by those days standards. For example, I believe the TRS80 -2 could be bought from Tandy with an installed Shugart SA1000, 10 MByte HDD. --Tom94022 00:19, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the origins of "diskette," when I was a boy in the early 80's, I was fascinated by the IBM System 34 at a local business, and the SA was very generous about letting me gawk at it and answering, or at least tolerating my endless questions. I remember she always corrected me if I refered to one of its 5 1/4" diskettes as a "disk."

The *disks* were the massive 14-inch belt-driven platters that filled most of the machine's cabinet. "Diskette" was the only proper term for the 5.25" floppy. "Floppy," I seem to recall, was considered an improper and unprofessional term in the "big computer" world. --David A. Flory 2:25 26 September 2006 (CST)

[edit] Hello?!?!

What is with the "hello" at the beginning of this topic? If you would like this to be removed please type "support" or if you oppose the idea of removing "hello" type "oppose". Be sure not to erase others entrys. Please include a breif reason for why you support or oppose the idea.

Survey

   Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with 71.65.92.121 20:56, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

__________________________________________________________________________

Support- The hello is un-attractive MrWonderful

The "hello" you're talking about was a test edit added by an anonymous contributor 90 minutes before you reverted it. Nobody wants it there. Don't worry. Deco 00:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why use formatted capacity

The "Background" section is hopelessly flawed. We're using formatted capacity, but formatted capacity depends on the drive being used, the encoding method being used and the filesystem being used. It depends little on the disks themselves. For example, a 1MB floppy could be: 720kB (PC) 880kB (Amiga FFS) 838kB (Amiga OFS) 800kB (Mac) 976kB (Amiga NFS) But, all along, the actual capacity of the disk is 1MB. Wayne Hardman 18:59, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

You raise an excellent point about inconsistancies caused by using formated capacity. I believe it is more correct to say the disk sets an upper limit on gross capacity ("unformatted capacity") and the associatied controller (part of the system not the drive) determines the formatted capacity. The unformatted capacity of floppy disks was usually stated in terms of full track capacity, no gaps, written at nominal rotational speed, nominal data frequency and a specified recording format. As such it was unrealizable mainly due to rotational speed variation. Some folks tried changing the recording format to a more efficient one but that usually led to a higher error rate - TAANSTAFL. If someone has the time, they should change the table to show unformatted capacity and then variations in formated capacities as you did above. Maybe I'll do it if have the chance--Tom94022 19:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

This "issue" is already hinted at in the "Ultimate capacity, speed" section, however unless we can find a reliable source saying "data density can't exceed tot bits/cm2" or something equivalent, and find what density was used for each "generation" of floppy disks, including increased densities in the same form factor. Even if sources are found, it will be very consusing speaking of "the 2 unformatted MB era" and the "1 MB unformatted MB era", when readers will probably look for familiar figures such as 1.44 MB etc. Plus, does anyone have an idea what the unformatted capacity of, say, a "360KB" 5 1/4" drive or 3" drive was supposed to be? 400 KB? 500 KB?EpiVictor 14:17, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The "reliable source" is the specified unformatted capacity from the manufacturer's data sheets for the disk drives, since in that era the net capacity was a function of the controller - typically provided by a third party. If a system exceeded that density (whatever the bits/cm²) it would void the drive and media warranties. Depending upon the efficiency of the controller, the same drive/disk combination would have different formatted capacities - see Section 7.1 for a discussion of some of the variations in formatted capacity from a medium. To answer your question regarding the "360KB" 5¼ inch drive, I'd have to find the Shugart SA410 OEM manual - I suspect it would show an unformatted capacity of 512.512 kBytes (or 500.5 KiBytes) Tom94022 16:01, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Whatever happened to Randolph Scott the B drive

This is semantic, but it's been bugging me for about five years - too much to forget, but not enough to ever really bring it to the forefront of my mind. Why is it computers don't have B: drives. My first Windows-based computer - a 3.1 machine, built in 1992 - had four drives, which were neatly laid out in alphabetical order. But I've never seen another machine since that had a B: drive. What happened to them? -Litefantastic 02:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

In MSDOS machines, A: & B: were reserved for floppy disk drives and hard disk drives were allocated drive letters at boot beginning with C:. Did yr 3.1 machine had two FDD's? Most early Windows were DOS underneath so it continured. I suspect the more modern Windows (NT, NT based and beyond) for compatibility continued reserving the B: designation for the second FDD and designating HDD 0 (Drive 0, IDE port 0) as C: - for example, in my Win2K pro system the B: designation is not available for reassignment to my DVD even though years ago when I had 2 FDD's the second one was designated B:--Tom94022 16:37, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the A:, B:, etc. designation is not a property of the floppy drive or the computer. It's the operating system which provides the semantics of drives access and how this is done. The [letter]: designation predates MS-DOS and Windows. See also Drive letter assignment. --Frodet 17:19, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Many recent PC motherboards have a BIOS that only supports a single floppy drive. Some of them do still have an 'advanced' option to present the single floppy as B: to the operating system, often labeled something like 'Swap floppy drive', sometimes also mentioning Windows in the option. In any case, Microsoft operating systems all reserve drive letter B: for a second floppy drive. I don't know if this will be continued in Windows Vista.

Technically Microsoft Operating Systems reserve both A: and B: drive letters. And the "Swap Floppy Drives" in the BIOS will flip the assignment of the drives. A: <> B: You can use this with two floppy drives in the system. And to simply assign them backwards. This is us full if you don't have a ribbon cable that will connect correctly to the drives you have based on plug type. Or maybe you need to Boot off the B: drive disk type.

My system for example has a combo A: and B: drive in it. It's both a 3.5" and 5.25" drives in one drive bay. Because of this I have a A: and B: drive on my XP system. I have seen computer with two 3.5" drive in them and again you will have A: and B: drives used. Also it's interesting to know that if you go to a command prompt and attempt to access drive B: (and you only have a drive A:) on any DOS based OS (DOS,Win 3.1,95,98,ME) it will redirect to A:. Also unknown to many people is that floppy drives have a jumper on them much like a Hard Disk that defines them as aether A: or B: drive. By default it's set to B: and a twist in the ribbon cable is used to flip it back to an A: drive. Thus a B: drive would be connected before the twist.

[edit] This just may kill the floppy

Staples office supply stores now have a plastic tub at the checkout with 64 megabyte USB flash drives priced $10 or less. Cheap enough to buy as party favors for your kid's birthday party. Makes me feel old to remember that some floppy disks cost more than that for one disk! (Or that a 64M usb flash drive used to be so expensive it was kept in the back room and you had to tackle a store employee to get one for you.)

Once again, the only thing standing between floppy disks and "death" is their role as a legacy device for last-ditch maintenance and administrative tasks such as emergency boots, Flash BIOS updates etc. 193.92.246.52 11:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Thing is floppies have come down too. To the point where you can treat them like BIC pens buying them by the boxfull and not really caring where they end up. Flash sticks haven't (and may never given the physical side to them) reach that price point yet. CD-Rs are down at similar prices to floppies but you have the extra pain of buring being a seperate task (packet writing never really took off and preformatted CDs for packet writing were never really availible) that always seems to have a minimum time greater than copying a small file to a floppy. Plugwash 14:39, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't be so quick to replace floppies with USB drives - USB drives are notoriously unstable and crash without warning or hope of recovery. Floppy disks last for a good while and are often recoverable after they start to die. Cached 06:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pricing

One point about floppies was their relative low price. Up to the mid-90s 5,25"-Floppies have been the cheapest storage medium on a $ per MB scale. I know many people which used 5,25"-drive on their Macs, Amigas and Ataris troughout the 80ths and 90ths just because those media costs only a third of a 3,5"-media. Crass Spektakel 15:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I hope they used the 1.2 MB variety, though :-) Amstrad CPC users did use 5'25" floppies, for one because they could be formatted exactly like 3" ones and were even more cheaper (like 1/5th or even less) than 3" disks, but Amiga and Atari ST...could high density 5,25" be formatted exactly like Amiga or Atari ST disks? Or was it merely used in its standard 1.2 MB format for generic data storage? EpiVictor 17:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] heritage

While there was never a direct followup to the floppy one can say that between 1995 and 2005 the CDR/CDRW/DVDR/DVDRW mostly replaced it. Nowadays it seems like USB-storage-systems are going to replace all earlier media, no matter what exactly is connected to USB, be it a magnetic Harddisk, Flash-Memory or optical CD/DVD-drives. Crass Spektakel 15:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

There were (and are) some people who waste a whole CD-ROM just to burn 1-2 MB worth of files and don't even use multisession, but there really was no widespread rewriteable medium until 2002-2003, when USB and flash storage really became affordable and supported. As for USB based media...maybe Flash or some other solid state media, but not necessarily with an USB connection. Think about how faster an internal SATA connection is compared to USB 2.0 .... EpiVictor 17:18, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kibibytes

Who the hell filled this article with kibibytes. Who the hell put those scare quotes around traditional kilobytes and megabytes. Nobody talks about kibibytes. Nobody. 1024 bytes is a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes is a megabyte. - ∅ (∅), 21:11, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, this whole flapdoodle about a kilobyte = 1000, and a kibibyte = 1024, is just annoying. Considering a kilobyte 1000 bytes even is just incorrect and plain stupid. Even though that is the SI prefix standard, but bases of 10 (which SI is based from) don't work well with binary systems, with its bases from 8. I'm just confused as to why there ever was a (x)bibyte standard (aka the IEC Binary prefix) devised in the first place. I realize that I've answered my own question there, but I thought it would just be understood and assumed that the SI prefixes applied in the world of binary/computing systems would equal 1024, instead of having to come up with a new term for it to reflect such. I never use the (x)bibyte terminology myself, but it seems like everyone else here on Wikipedia has a fetish towards it, IMHO. Besides, calling it all (x)bibyte sounds kind of alliteratively silly, too, like booblebyte. ;) You'd think the IEC would of come up with a better-sounding name. misternuvistor 03:24, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

A proper prefix system for binary would have to be two-based, not ten-based. I propose:

2 bytes = doppelbyte
4 bytes = quadrobyte
8 bytes = eightobyte
16 bytes = sweetobyte
32 bytes = intelobyte
64 bytes = nintendobyte
128 bytes = archaeobyte
256 bytes = toofiddysixobyte
512 bytes = notnearlyenoughobyte
1024 bytes = enoughobyte

Until this rational, reasonable system is adopted, we should probably stick with units that people understand. "Kilobyte" is fine for 1024; if we need to disambiguate, we can say "binary kilobyte", or contrast it with the "scammy floppy-disk makers' kilobyte" of 1000.

Hey, sounds like a plan to me. ;) misternuvistor 08:19, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FAR

I have nominated Floppy disk for a featured article review because I am concerned it may not meet the requirements of a featured article. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Gzkn 07:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comparison to punched card storage capacity

The Origins section includes this statement: The IBM standard soft-sectored disk format was designed to hold just as much data as one box of punch cards. The disk was divided into 77 tracks of 26 sectors, each holding 128 bytes. Note that 77×26 = 2002 sectors, whereas a box of punch cards held 2000 cards.

The implication is that a punched card = 128 bytes. I believe the most common IBM punched cards are 80 bytes. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jmsofia (talk • contribs) 21:59, 10 December 2006 (UTC).

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