When was the floppy disk first released. Floppy drives and floppy disks

- This is a plastic rectangular piece on which you can write information (files and folders). Another name for it is a floppy disk.

This device is used to transfer files and folders from one place to another - from one computer to another. To be able to open it on a computer, there must be a special floppy drive.

Many modern computers do not have such a drive. This is because floppy disks are considered obsolete storage media. Many are not even aware of their existence.

If your computer does not have a floppy disk drive, and you need to work with them, then you can always buy a floppy drive separately and connect it to your computer.

Why do people refuse diskettes? The main reason is that little information is placed on it. You will not be able to record music, video - even more so, and photos good quality This device will also not fit.

A floppy disk holds only 1.44 MB.

Another disadvantage of floppy disks is that they are unreliable. You can use it for several years and everything will be fine, or you can accidentally drop it and it will never open again. Someone says that they spoil in the subway. Someone - that because of the sun's rays or the cold. But no one can say for sure. Therefore, if you are going to write something to a floppy disk, it is better to buy two pieces and write the same thing on one and on the second.

Protect from moisture, heat and cold. Some advise carrying the floppy disk in a "file" (transparent bag for documents).

How to open a floppy disk

To view the information recorded on a floppy disk, you need to open "Computer" (My computer)

And open in it "Disk 3.5 (A:)"

Features of floppy disks

At the bottom of this device there are two "windows" (small holes). One is always open - it just does not close, the other can be open, or it can be closed. When the window, which can be closed, is open, it means that you can neither erase nor write to the floppy disk. But one has only to close the window, as it will be possible to record and erase.

A little over forty years ago, the first computer diskettes appeared, and thirty years ago, the well-known 3.5-inch diskettes came out. And they are still in production! Nowadays, flash drives and external devices are used to transfer information. hard drives, and all previous developments are almost consigned to oblivion. IT. TUT.BY studied which removable media left a noticeable mark on computer history, and which could become the standard for many years to come.

Here we will consider only floppy disks and cartridges with magneto-optical disks that were inserted into readers, and we will not disassemble ordinary disks and tape drives.

Floppy disk 8" (Floppy Disc)

Developer: IBM

Released: 1971

Dimensions: 200x200x1 mm

Volume: from 80 Kb at the beginning of the release to 1.2 Mb

Distribution: ubiquitous

In 1967, a group led by Alan Shugart organized a group at IBM to develop new floppy disks. In 1971, the first eight-inch floppy disk was released to the market: a round flat floppy disk in a plastic envelope measuring 20x20 cm. Due to its flexibility, the novelty was named Floppy Disc - "floppy disk". At first, the capacity was only 80 kilobytes, but over time, the recording density was increased, and after five years, floppy disks could already contain more than a megabyte of information.

Floppy 5.25" (Mini Floppy Disk)

Developer: Shugart Associates

Released: 1976

Dimensions: 133x133x1 mm

Volume: from 110 Kb at the beginning of the release to 1.2 Mb

Data exchange rate: up to 63 Kb/s

Distribution: ubiquitous

Two years after the release of the first eight-inch floppy disks, Alan Shugart founded own company Shugart Associates, which three years later introduced a new development - a five-inch floppy disk and disk drive. The company also noted the development of the SASI standard, which was later renamed SCSI. Floppy disks were single-sided and double-sided, many computer designers used their own formatting methods and writing algorithms, due to which disks written in one drive might not be read in another. Schoolchildren during the decline of the USSR and the first years of independence of the Union republics loaded computers from such floppy disks and played simple games. By the mid-eighties, the capacity of floppy disks had been increased tenfold. And Shugart Associates, by the way, subsequently changed its name to the well-known Seagate.

3.5" Floppy Disk (Micro Floppy Disk)

Developer: Sony

Released: 1981

Dimensions: 93x89x3 mm

Volume: from 720 KB at the beginning of the release to 1.44 MB (standard), up to 2.88 MB (Extended Density)

Data exchange rate: up to 63 Kb/s

Distribution: ubiquitous

In 1981, Sony introduced an entirely new type of floppy disk: the 3-inch floppy disk. They were no longer truly flexible, but the name remained. Now the magnetic circle was enclosed in plastic three millimeters thick, and the hole for the heads was covered with a curtain on a spring. These shutters, especially metal shutters, loosened and bent during operation, and often came off inside the drive and remained there. Floppy disks became very popular, and different manufacturers computers equipped them with their cars. Sony produced several models of digital cameras, which were recorded on floppy disks. By 1987, the standard capacity of floppy disks had grown to 1.44 MB, and a little later, thanks to even greater recording density, it was possible to “squeeze out” up to 2.88 MB. Cunning students in dormitories (including Belarusian ones) "overclocked" floppy disks up to 1.7-1.8 MB for money, while they could be read in ordinary disk drives. Despite everything, three-inch floppy disks are still being produced. Floppy disks are almost obsolete, but many programs still have the icon for the "Save" command in the form of a floppy disk.

Amstrad Disc 3" (Compact Floppy Disc, CF2)

Developer: Hitachi, Maxell, Matsushita

Release year: 1982

Dimensions: 100x80x5 mm

Volume: from 125 Kb at the beginning of the release to 720 Kb

Distribution: Fairly wide - mostly Amstrad CPC and Amstrad PCW computers, also Tatung Einstein, ZX Spectrum +3, Sega SF-7000, Gavilan SC

Amstrad, a well-known computer manufacturer, decided to go its own way and promoted Hitachi's 3-inch floppy disks in a different format. Even more surprising is the fact that the company was founded by the same Alan Shugart, who developed the first floppy disks. The magnetic disk itself inside the case occupied less than half of the free space - the rest fell on the media protection mechanisms, which is why the cost of these disks was quite high. Despite the fact that these floppy disks were more expensive than standard 3.5-inch floppy disks with less memory, the company has been promoting them for a long time and succeeded a lot: more than 3 million Amstrad CPC computers were produced alone.

Bernoulli Box

Developer: Iomega

Released: 1983

Dimensions: Bernoulli Box: 27.5x21 cm, Bernoulli Box II: 14x13.6x0.9 cm

Volume: from 5 MB at the beginning of the release to 230 MB

Data transfer rate: up to 1.95 Mb/s

Distribution: small

Iomega, later one of the main "whales" of the removable media market, developed the original Bernoulli Box disc in 1983. In it, the floppy disk rotates at a high speed (3000 rpm), as a result of which the surface of the disk directly under the read head is bent and does not come into contact with it: read / write operations are performed through an air cushion. The equations for describing these air flows were proposed by the prominent Swiss scientist Daniel Bernoulli back in the 18th century. Thanks to this development, the company gained fame, although the first products did not differ in capacity or portability: the first cartridges were 27.5x21 cm in size and contained only 5 megabytes of information. The second generation decreased in size by about a quarter, and by 1994 the amount of memory had grown to 230 megabytes. But by that time, magneto-optical disks began to actively advance.

Magneto-optical drive (MO)

Developer: Sony

Release year: 1985

Dimensions: 133х133х6 mm, 93х89х6 mm, 72х68х5 mm for MiniDisc

Volume: from 650 MB to 9.2 GB for 5-inch, from 128 MB to 2.3 GB for 3.5-inch, 980 MB for minidiscs

Data exchange rate: up to 10 Mb/s

Distribution: Significant

Magneto-optical discs look like standard and reduced size CDs in a box. But at the same time, they have an important difference: the recording is carried out precisely in a magnetic way, that is, first the laser heats the surface to a high temperature, and then the magnetization of the sections changes with an electromagnetic pulse. The system is highly reliable and resistant to mechanical damage and magnetic radiation, but it provides a low write speed and high power consumption. Both disks and drives were expensive, so magneto-optics did not receive very wide distribution, like CDs. The distribution was also held back by the fact that for a very long time such disks allowed data to be written only once. But in some industries (for example, medicine), where a large amount of information is required to be stored for a long time (and MO disks "live" up to 50 years), the technology has received recognition. Sony still produces magneto-optical discs in both small and big size. MiniDisc music discs, introduced by the same Sony company in 1992, are special case magneto-optical disks. If at first they only allowed recording music, then the modifications MD Data (1993) and Hi-MD (2004) provide recording of any data with a volume of 650 MB and 980 MB, respectively. "Minidiscs" are also still produced.

SyQuest drives

Developer: SyQuest

Year of issue: circa 1990

Dimensions: 5.25" format (approx. 13x13 cm) and 3.5" (approx. 9x9 cm)

Volume: 5.25": 44, 88 and 200 MB; 3.5": 105 and 270 MB

Distribution: medium (predominantly with MacIntosh computers)

QyQuest, founded in 1982 by former Seagate employee Syed Iftikhar, entered the market with removable hard drives for IBM XT computers. The firm later developed several different disc-cartridge systems. The most popular are 5.25-inch SQ400/SQ800/SQ2000 cartridges (44, 88 and 200 MB), as well as 3.5-inch SQ310/SQ327 (105 and 270 MB). Their main disadvantage, besides their size, was that later systems were not fully compatible with earlier ones. So, drives for 200 MB disks could only read 88 MB disks, but could not write to them. The younger systems could neither read nor write to the older ones. In the year of release, 44 MB discs cost about $100. A variety of incompatible standards and the lack of a normal trade name for a particular technology did not allow disks to gain wide popularity. Magneto-optical disks provided more storage, and Iomega's Zip disks soon followed.

floptical

Developer: Insite Peripherals

Released: 1991 (Insite Floptical), 1998 (Caleb UHD144, Sony HiFD)

Dimensions: 93x89x3 mm

Volume: 21 MB (Insite Floptical), 144 MB (Caleb UHD144), 150-200 MB (Sony HiFD)

Data exchange rate: up to 125 Kb/s

Distribution: very small

Another magneto-optical technology, but of a different kind. Information is read by magnetic heads, and the optical subsystem (infrared LEDs) ensures the accuracy of head positioning. Thus, instead of the usual 135 tracks per inch, like floppy disks, they achieved a recording density of 1250 tracks per inch. Floptical drives were compatible with conventional 3.5-inch floppy disks, and at first Floptical disks were positioned as a successor to floppy disks, but this did not happen. Seven years later, Caleb Technology developed its own similar system, the Caleb UHD144, and Sony released Sony HiFD drives. Both of these systems were also compatible with conventional floppy disks and both were also called floppy substitutes, but they were a resounding failure in the market, because by that time the market for removable media for 100-250 MB was taken over by Iomega Zip disks.

Zip Drive (Iomega Zip)

Developer: Iomega

Release year: 1994

Dimensions: 98x98x6 mm

Volume: from 100 MB at the beginning of the release to 750 MB

Data transfer rate: about 1 Mb/s

Distribution: very wide

Compact discs were still expensive and did not allow erasing records (CD-RW appeared only in 1997), magneto-optical discs were expensive and voracious, and the capacity of conventional floppy disks was no longer enough. Iomega improved magnetic recording technology and introduced Zip disks: slightly larger than floppy disks, and with a capacity of as much as 100 megabytes. The head was brought to the disk not from above, but from the side, and the data exchange rate was about 15 times faster than that of conventional floppy disks. Disk drives were produced in several formats - both external and internal, elegantly shaped and blue, which could be placed flat on the table or vertically. The technology quickly gained popularity. Despite the "clicks of death" that were a sign of disk failure, "zips" sold successfully. In the year it was released, disc drives were $100 and discs were $20 each; later there were 250 MB disks (round shape, but the same dimensions) and 750 MB disks (the usual form). Since the beginning of the 2000s, the popularity of Zip drives has declined, but Iomega still sells 100-megabyte drives for $9 apiece, and "seven hundred and fifty" for $12.50. Many vintage technology enthusiasts still use epoch-making devices.

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Good day to all, dear readers of my blog. How is your mood? Hope it's excellent. You know? I recently discovered old floppy disks at work. I immediately remembered how I used to come to my father at work and insert 5-inch floppy disks into the computer to play some kind of game.

Now floppy disks have long gone into oblivion, although 3.5-inch drives can still be found in stores. But what to say about them, when even laser discs are outliving their last days, because there are also compact flash drives. You don't even need to have a flash drive. Now with the development of the Internet, you can store files on special cloud services and have access to them from anywhere where there is an Internet connection.

In general, today I want to tell you what was the history of the development of disks and floppy disks, how long each model lasted, etc. The article, of course, is not particularly entertaining, but I hope that you will like it and allow you to relax and plunge into nostalgia.

floppy disks

Floppy disks are otherwise called floppy disks and they are the first portable storage media with the ability to rewrite multiple times. And for all the time there were several types of such carriers.

8 inches

The first 8-inch floppy disk was released by IBM back in 1971. Can you imagine? These discs were made from special polymer material with a magnetic coating, after which they were enclosed in a special thin plastic box.

And of course, a small amount of information could be recorded on such media - no more than 800 kb. Can you imagine? What is 800 kb? It's just nothing. But to be honest, I myself have never seen such floppy disks. Although it is necessary to take somewhere for the collection.

5.25 inches

Eight-inch floppy disks were replaced in 1976 by 5.25-inch floppy disks. But they were no longer created by IBM, but by Shugart Associates. But in fact, they differed little from their predecessors, except for the size, memory capacity (110, 360, 720, 1200 kb) and the plastic coating was more rigid. I came across only 720 kb discs when I played with my father at work but that was enough.

3.5 inches

I think that 3.5-inch media saw and touched everything, since it actually disappeared into oblivion not so long ago, although, as I said above, they are still used and sold in stores, although I have computer and laptop already and there is no disk drive.

For the first time this floppy disk was created and demonstrated by the well-known company SONY in 1981. This carrier was already specifically different from its predecessors. Firstly, it was smaller in size, secondly, a specifically different design and a very rigid case, and thirdly, in the middle there was no longer a hole, but a special round metal insert that allowed the disk to be correctly distributed inside the computer.

The volume of such floppy disks was 720 kb (rare), 1.44 MB (running) and 2.88 MB. They were even popular back in the early 2000s, when not everyone could afford a flash drive, and a separate drive was needed to burn to CD.

Iomega ZIP

In the 90s of the last century (Oh, how strange it sounds), new storage media appeared, which were called ZIP disks. These things were very similar in appearance to 3.5-inch ones, but thicker and heavier, so they also needed a separate drive. Such disks had a capacity of 100 and 250 MB (it was even very rare to find 750 MB). Imagine how much it is compared to the previous ones.

Such carriers were supposed to replace and oust 3.5-inch media from the market, but this did not happen. Such drives and zips themselves were incredibly expensive and no one bought them. So this idea withered, and people also remained to sit on ordinary three-inch friends. By the way, I have a few lying around at work, but I myself have not seen them in action.

laser discs

If you think laserdiscs are more modern media then you are wrong. Their creation began in 1979, and in 1982 it went into mass production.

At the beginning, it was assumed that these media would be used only as musical ones, but then it was decided to make it so that any information could be stored on it.

Interesting fact: By the way, do you know why initially it was possible to record 74 minutes of sound on a disc? Why such a strange number? Because the vice-president of SONY insisted wildly that this medium could completely fit Bach's ninth symphony, which just lasts 74 minutes. It was the longest work, and if it fit, then others would fit.

But in the early 2000s, it was decided to increase the volume, and if earlier it was possible to record up to 74 minutes of audio or 650 MB of data on a disc, now it was possible to record up to 80 minutes of audio or 700 MB of data.

The discs themselves are made of polycarbonate with a thin coating of aluminum (sometimes silver), which is eventually covered with a very thin layer of varnish.

CD-R and CD-RW

In 1988, a new type of disc appeared, which was originally released empty, but on which you could record information yourself. Such discs are commonly called blanks and information can be written to them, but this information cannot be deleted. This format is called CD-R (Compact Disk Recordable).

Almost 10 years later, in 1997, a format similar to CD-R appears, but with one significant difference. On this medium, it was possible not only to write something, but also to erase and rewrite. This format is called CD-RW (Compact Disk ReWritable).

I remember how in 2003 I bought myself a CD-RW drive and was so happy that now I can record discs, compile my own music collections from those compositions that I like. At that time, almost no one knew such people. There was only one classmate and that's it.

DVD

In 1996, the Japanese invented a new format for laser media - DVD (Digital Video Disk - Digital Video Disk). In terms of size and appearance, these discs are no different from ordinary CDs, except that the essence is denser. But the first copy that received the DVD-1 format could already contain 2 times more information, namely 1.46 GB.

Over time, other formats appeared with a larger volume: DVD-5, DVD-9 and even DVD-18. The most popular models were DVD-5 and they contained 4.7 GB of information. DVD-9 was less common, but DVD-18 with the declared 17-gigabyte volume I personally have never met.

DVD+R and DVD-R

Well, in the image and likeness of a CD, blank discs were also produced, but with one difference. They were divided into two camps - DVD+R and DVD-R. At the time when I was just starting to use them, no one even really knew how they differed. Of course, there are some differences, but they are not so critical and are not even particularly relevant anymore.

For example, at one time most DVD players could not play the "+" format. In addition, it was possible not only to record information on DVD + R / RW, but also to overwrite it, which could not be done on DVD-R. On DVD-R - once recorded and made ends meet. There are still some differences and clarifications, but I think that there is no point in going into such details.

DVD-RAM

Another DVD format, which did not gain strong popularity, as it cost much more, and there was little sense in it. Its main difference was that if a regular DVD-RW disc was designed to be written no more than 1000 times, then RAM was designed to write data more than ten or even hundreds of thousands of times.

Well, it was also possible to record information in real time on such a disk, i.e. without additional programs(like a flash drive). I used this type of disc only for an old DVD camera, since real-time recording was just taking place there. By the way, it still works and the disk in it also works, but one side of it has already fallen into disrepair. What then hundreds of thousands of times can we talk about?

Well, in general, it turns out that the format is not particularly necessary and turned out. Tell me, have you ever used RW to record 1000 times? And at least 100? I personally believe that I have never used one disk more than 30-40 times. They were quickly lost or deteriorated from physical influences.

BD

The last thing in this article, I would like to highlight the BD format, in other words, Blu-Ray (Blu-Ray Disk), which was released in 2006. This disk, again, looks no different from the previous ones, but it has become even denser and, of course, it can contain a larger amount of information - from 25 GB (single-layer) to 50 GB (double-layer).

This type was invented mainly in order to put there films (or other video) with a very high quality. If you use torrents to find movies, you may have seen that some movies are BD-rip. This means that they have just been transferred from a Blu-ray disc and such films usually occupy more than 15 gigabytes. But of course you can record regular files as well.

But despite the fact that the format is voluminous, it did not gain much popularity and practically passed by the box office. A friend told me that when he worked in a photo salon, in addition to photographing and various services, he had to sell various goods (films, albums, disks, flash drives, etc.).

So, one day he was asked if Bluray is available? But they were not available. After that, the boss bought 30 of these BDs for the purpose of marketing, but for 2 years no one was interested in them anymore.

Well, that's all I would like to tell you about the evolution of discs. As you understand, I will not shove flash drives here, because they can be given a separate article. I hope that you liked my article and you will not forget to subscribe to blog updates. See you in other articles. Bye bye.

Sincerely, Dmitry Kostin.

"The year is 1967. IBM's media engineering labs at IBM in San Jose are trying to build a low-cost device that can store and transfer firmware for processors, mainframes, and control modules. The price of the device must not exceed $5 (otherwise, it cannot be considered replaceable).

Now it's 2005 - 38 years have passed since the appearance of the first prototype of the floppy disk, but FDD continues to live! What is the secret of such survivability of this "relic" of the past, the same as a matrix printer or a COM port? It seems to me, in the ratio price / reliability / quality. It is now difficult for us to understand what a revolution the ordinary floppy disk caused in its time. It's a pity! In an instant, tons of punched cards, kilometers of magnetic tape were no longer needed. One plastic envelope and no problems or mistakes! What will be told today should reveal to the reader the genius of such an unprepossessing, at first glance, invention as an ordinary floppy disk.

Floppy drive disks are believed to have been invented in 1971 to solve a problem that IBM faced with building the System 370 computer. The problem was that the programs stored in its semiconductor memory were erased whenever the computer's power was turned off. "To reboot the machine, you had to write the control program back into memory," recalled Al Shugart, then manager of direct-access storage devices at IBM. Subsequently, the founder of Shugart Associates and the manufacturer of storage devices - Seagate Technology.

Although Shugart is often called the father of the floppy disk, he himself considers David Noble to be its real creator. Noble, was a senior engineer at the San Jose laboratory and steadfastly endured on his shoulders the hardships of working as Shugart's only subordinate. First of all, Noble tested the technologies that existed at that time. But soon I realized that it was necessary to look for fundamentally new ways. It was then that the first floppy disk was proposed. Within a year, Noble (whose group had already grown significantly) completed work on a device that IBM called the "memory disk". It was actually a floppy disk. It was an 8-inch plastic disk coated with ferrous oxide, providing read-only access. This disk weighed about 2 ounces, its capacity was 80 Kbytes. The turning point in the creation of the floppy disk was the invention of the protective case. "We got our drive working, but we couldn't come up with a good protective shell for it," Shugart recalled. - "Any speck of dust completely destroyed the data. The percentage of errors was very high." And so the developers came up with the idea to put the device in a case made of non-woven material, which would provide constant wiping of the surface of the floppy disk during its rotation. Thus, the surface always remained clean. "This idea ultimately decided the whole thing," says Shugart.

After extensive testing, the floppy was built into the System 370; this happened in 1971. It was also used to load firmware into an IBM Merlin 3330 disk pack controller.

Yet the design of the floppy disk, which appeared in 1971, has not become the industry standard, according to Jim Porter, now president of the Disk/Trend analytics company. In those times about which in question, Porter worked for MEMOREX, an independent floppy disk manufacturer. In 1973, IBM introduced new version floppy disks, this time for the 3704 Data Entry System. "The recording format was completely different, and the floppy was spinning the other way," Porter explained. It provided the ability to read and write and allowed you to store up to 256 KB of data. Users had the opportunity to enter data from floppy disks, and not from punched cards. The fundamental difference of the invention from all the previous ones was in the floppy disk drive (floppy disk, or just a floppy disk), where there were two motors: one provided a stable rotation speed of the diskette inserted into the drive, and the second moved the write-read head. The rotation speed of the first motor depended on the type of diskette and ranged from 300 to 360 rpm. The motor for moving the heads in these drives has always been a stepper. With its help, the heads moved along the radius from the edge of the disk to its center at discrete intervals. Unlike the hard drive, the heads in this device did not "hover" above the surface, but touched it.

Representatives of IBM argued that the new device can accommodate the same amount of information as 3,000 punched cards. The release of the new floppy was a kind of starting pistol shot for the manufacturers of these devices. Even now, some companies use eight-inch floppy disks!!! Mainly when working with computerized machines. But in 1976, around the same time that the first personal computers appeared, the 5.25-inch floppy disk was developed.

According to Porter (of Wang Laboratories) - who was working on a desktop computer that could perform the functions word processor: - "The eight-inch floppy was obviously too big for him." The company, in collaboration with Shugart Associates, began work on a smaller device. "We discussed the size of the floppy disk very heatedly - we sat all night in one of the bars in Boston. The answer was prompted by a case - someone drew attention to a napkin placed under a glass of cocktail, its size was just 5.25 inches, Porter recalled. “We stole it, brought it to Boston, and told our engineers: “Since such a trifle is in demand, let our floppy disk be the same size.” The improvement of floppy disks did not stop at the size of a napkin, the result was the now so popular three-inch floppy disk, developed by Sony Corporation more than 30 years ago. This drive has lived a rich life and lives to this day, although it should be noted that most companies have already abandoned own production three inch floppy disks. One of the first firms to close its floppy disk factories was KAO in 1996, followed by IBM, 3M/Imation. Most of these companies have moved production to third parties or switched to the now-fangled practice of outsourcing. Already in the mid-90s, all experts started talking about the fact that the speed, and most importantly, the capacity of floppy disks, no longer meets the needs of today. Consumption of standard floppy disks stabilized, and by the end of 2000 sales began to decline worldwide.

Sales of 3.5" floppy disks in Europe (million units)

YEAR 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

Sales 565 560 572 505 450

The situation in Russia turned out to be somewhat different. Here, the growth of the floppy disk market in quantitative terms continued until 2002. Now it is worth turning to the technical side of the issue. It is known that for each of the floppy disk sizes (5.25 or 3.5 inches) their own special drives of the corresponding form factor were developed. Floppy disks of each size (5.25 and 3.5 inches) became double-sided (Double Sided, DS), and single-sided gradually ceased to be produced.

The recording density could be different:

• single (Single Density, SD);
• double (Double Density, DD);
• high (High Density, HD).

Since few people remember single density anymore, I will skip this classification, and talk only about double-sided double-density floppy disks (DS / DD, capacity 360 or 720 KB) and double-sided floppy disks high density(DS/HD, capacity 1.2, 1.44 or 2.88 MB). The recording density of a floppy disk is determined by the size of the gap between the disk and the magnetic head, and the quality of the recording (reading) itself depends on the stability of the gap. To increase the density, it was vital to reduce the gap. However, this significantly increased the requirements for the quality of the working surface of the floppy disk. Aluminum alloy D16MP (MP - magnetic memory) began to be used as a material for the manufacture of magnetic disks.

The floppy disk itself was a layer of magnetically soft material deposited on a special substrate made of a polymeric non-magnetic plastic substance, the degree of rigidity of which could be different depending on the implementation. The carrier itself was placed in a paper, plastic or other casing-case. In the casing, the floppy disk was freely rotated by the drive of the disk drive through the window of the central grip. This provided the area of ​​the track under the read/write device - the read/write head. Holes were located on the casing of the floppy disk:

• Central grip
• Head positioning hole
• a physical write protection hole;
• guide holes and grooves;
• · openings of automatic detection of the type of magnetic coating;
• hole for determining the full turnover of the carrier;
• · The hole for positioning the magnetic read/write heads of 3.14 inch media is closed with a metal latch.
• · Hole for central gripping and rotation on the disc rotation drive spindle (unlike 5.25-inch media, located only on the underside of the floppy disk).

Another fundamental innovation, for its time, was such an operation as formatting. Initially, floppy disks were formatted using special software - quite unusual for today's layman. As a rule, floppy disk manufacturers specified a parameter called the number of dots per inch of the media - TRACK PER INCH (TPI). This parameter said what maximum density of the regions of independent magnetization the carrier can have.

The first disc drives were huge! They were not located inside system block but were outside. The drive was universal device read/write. Each type of media, as a rule, required its own device - for reading 8", 5" and 3" floppy disks. Such a drive consisted of a motor, a media rotation control system, a motor, a read / write head positioning control system, signal generation and conversion circuits and other electronic devices.

It remains to conclude from the above that the development of a conventional floppy disk has become one of the most important components of the success of personal computers.

There is such an information carrier - a floppy disk. Information capacity this repository small, and this has led to the fact that it is almost never used. Although there are prospects for the revival of this technology when using several other principles of construction. Now let's find out what information capacity a floppy disk has, when it began to be used and what dimensions it has.

Magnetic tape

The described technology is based on magnetic tape. It is portable where data is recorded and stored. The magnetic tape is placed in a protected plastic case, which is additionally covered with a ferromagnetic layer. To read the data recorded on it, a floppy drive is used.

In domestic literature, the abbreviation GMD can be used to designate it. It stands for "flexible magnetic disk". That's what a floppy disk is. The information capacity of this medium depends on the creation technology used. But let's talk about everything in order.

eight inches

This is how much the first floppy disk had in diameter. Its information capacity was less than 100 KB. Their development was started by IBM after it introduced its first in 1960. By 1967, the first model was created, with which the era of portable drives began.

In the first samples, a casing with a fabric lining was used as protection. After a large number of tests, tests and additions in 1971, this invention was introduced to the market. The 8-inch floppy disks then sold were made from a simple plastic circle that was coated with iron oxide and placed in a cardboard sleeve. Its significant drawback was the presence of serious restrictions.

This was due to the fact that initially these were created for microprograms, as well as software necessary for diagnosing the state of large computer systems. The use of storage devices allowed operators of electronic computing systems to quickly perform the necessary actions. To do this, it was only necessary to load the required set of commands that the floppy had.

The information capacity at that time made it possible to interact quite effectively with a computer. There was also the potential to increase it, due to the fact that the data area was originally only on one side of the floppy disk.

Size in 5.25 inches

Discs with this size were introduced by the Shugart Association in 1976. Initially, their volume was about 100 kilobytes of information. But over time, with the help of corporations and companies, media were released where there was a two-sided recording. In addition, the placement density has been doubled. The result of these manipulations was that the amount of information grew to 1.2 MB.

This development was actively promoted by IBM, which led to their wide distribution. Three types of floppy disks are the most popular:

• for 160 KB;
• for 360 Kb;
• for 12 MB.

3.5 inch floppy disk

The most perfect this moment samples were offered by Sony back in the early 1980s. Of course, there were quite a few different competitive offers, but IBM settled on a 3.5-inch sample. In 1984, the floppy disk format was established, and a more advanced and improved invention was also released.

It had several fundamental differences. Among them - the presence of a rigid plastic case and the closing of the window for reading heads with a movable metal shutter. No changes were made to this generation of floppy disks for two decades. And in March 2011, Sony officially announced that they would cease production and sale of these drives.

A floppy disk served people for a very long time - although the information capacity of this storage was not large, it was more than enough to store electronic text documents or tables. Although, it is likely that they are still used in some places. Indeed, for the sake of justice, it is worth saying that the author’s computer also has a disk drive, and a pack of 3.5-inch 3.5-inchers that has not been used for a long time is looking at the person who writes these words. But modern models of computers, released in the past few years, no longer have the hardware capability of reading from these media.

Why they stopped using these storage media

The main reason for this is the small amount of stored information (the information capacity of a floppy disk is 1.44 MB). The rather low reliability also played a role. So, it was often enough to drop it once - and the floppy disk could be thrown away (but this is not a rule, only a frequent pattern).

In addition, presumably, there were many different reasons for its failure. Many noticed that after a trip to the subway, their carriers stopped working. Others argued that sunlight was enough for this (here a natural question arises - how did such citizens come to mind?) Or cold weather. Reliable is the information that floppy disks do not like moisture, as well as significant temperature changes (as well as going beyond the recommended range).

But be that as it may, the maximum information capacity of a diskette is only 1.44 MB, which is not enough now even to download one average music file to mp3. Maximum modern use- a set of text documents and tables with numbers.

Peculiarities

Do you have a floppy disk handy? We are not interested in information capacity now, just look at the two small holes at the bottom (windows). One is always in the open state (it simply does not close). But the second may look different. This affects the ability to record.

So, when the second window is open, it means that nothing can be written to or erased from the floppy disk. But one has only to open it, as it immediately becomes possible. This is the security mechanism these carriers have.

Comparison with other media

Let's do a little overview of the carriers. What is the storage capacity of a floppy disk? hard drive, CD, DVD and flash drives? We have already successfully considered the first type of carriers.

By hard drives we can say that the first of them had the amount of stored information in 2MB. Now you can see 3 TB media for sale.

The CD manufacturing technology is not very promising, since it has not been possible to obtain a result of more than 700 MB. But compared to floppy disks, it was a breakthrough.

Optical DVD media typically come in at 4.7 GB, although those with double-sided recording can boast over 8 GB.

And data warehouses built using flash technology can boast of a significant amount of stored information and small size. They can contain from a few units to hundreds of GB of information. As you can see, although not very much time has passed, the amount of stored data has increased thousands and millions of times.