Conversely to hard drives, the heads touched the disk, like in a cassette or video player that wears the media down over time. It was 8" in diameter with a magnetic coating, enclosed in a cardboard case with the capacity of one megabyte. The first floppy disk was introduced in 1971. For the computer to write information to the platter, the read/write head aligns the magnetic polarities, writing 0's and 1's that can be interpreted later by another device.īelow is a brief history of each of the three major floppy diskettes. Reading this as binary data, the computer can understand what the data is on the platter.
The read/write head uses a magnetic polarity of 0 or 1. When a 3.5" floppy diskette is inserted into the drive, the metal slide door is opened to expose the inner magnetic disk. How does a floppy disk store data?Ī floppy drive is a magnetic medium that stores and reads data on the floppy disk using a read head. If you have a new computer and want to read old floppy diskettes, you may purchase a USB floppy drive that works with all the latest computers. All the latest versions of Microsoft Windows also no longer include support for internal floppy drives because new computers do not come with them.
However, since the early 2000s, computers no longer shipped with floppy disk drives as users moved to CD-R and Zip drives, and later USB jump drives as capacities rose and prices fell. There are still a few diehards who are using floppy diskettes, and some government agencies still even use the 8" version. For example, a word processing file could be copied to a floppy disk and opened on another computer or stored as a backup. For example, the diskette version of Windows 95 came on 13 DMF diskettes and was installed one disk at a time.įloppy disks were also a common place for users to store and back up their files.
However, because most programs were larger than 1.44 MB, diskettes were usually required. If the program was small (less than 1.44 MB for the 3.5" floppy disk), it could be installed from one floppy disk.
The history of the floppy disk and drive.Įarly computers did not have CD-ROM drives or USB floppy disks were the only way to install a new program on a computer or back up your information.