FLOPPY DISK DRIVES

CONTENT

1. Introduction

2. History

3. Parts of Floppy Disk

4. Writing Data on Floppy Disk

5. Floppy Disk Drive Facts

6. Types & Specification

7. Floppy Disk Formats

 Floppy Disk Drive

8 inch, 5 ¼ inch, and 3.5 inch drives

 Floppy Disk Drive

8 inch, 5 ¼ inch, and 3.5 inch drives

 Date Invented:1969 (8 inch), 1976 (5 ¼ inch), 1983 (3.5 inch)

 Invented By: IBM team led by David Noble

 Connects to: Controller via cable

INTRODUCTION

 The floppy disk drive (FDD) was the primary means of adding data to
a computer until the CD-ROM Drive became popular. In fact, FDDs
have been a key component of most personal computers for more than
20 years.
 Basically, a floppy disk drive reads and writes data to a small, circular
piece of metal-coated plastic similar to audio cassette tape. In this
article.
 Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive or FDD, the
initials of which should not be confused with "fixed disk drive",
 which is another term for a hard disk drive. Invented by IBM, floppy
disks in 8", 5.25", and 3.5" formats enjoyed many years as a popular
form of data storage and exchange, from the middle 1970s to the late
1990s.

HISTORY
The floppy disk drive (FDD) was invented at IBM by Alan Shugart in
1967. The first floppy drives used an 8-inch disk (later called a
"diskette" as it got smaller), which evolved into the 5.25-inch disk that
was used on the first IBM Personal Computer in August 1981. The 5.25-
inch disk held 360 kilobytes compared to the 1.44 megabyte capacity of
today's 3.5-inch diskette.
The 5.25-inch disks were dubbed "floppy" because the diskette
packaging was a very flexible plastic envelope, unlike the rigid case used
to hold today's 3.5-inch diskettes.
By the mid-1980s, the improved designs of the read/write heads, along
with improvements in the magnetic recording media, led to the less-
flexible, 3.5-inch, 1.44-megabyte (MB) capacity FDD in use today. For a
few years, computers had both FDD sizes (3.5-inch and 5.25-inch). But
by the mid-1990s, the 5.25-inch version had fallen out of popularity,
partly because the diskette's recording surface could easily become
contaminated by fingerprints through the open access area.

Parts of a Floppy Disk Drive

1. The Disk
 A floppy disk is a lot like a cassette tape
 Both use a thin plastic base material coated with iron oxide. This oxide is
a ferromagnetic material, meaning that if you expose it to a magnetic
field it is permanently magnetized by the field.
 Both can record information instantly.
 Both can be erased and reused many times.
 Both are very inexpensive and easy to use.
 A floppy disk, like a cassette tape, is made from a thin piece of plastic
coated with a magnetic material on both sides. However, it is shaped like
a disk rather than a long thin ribbon. The tracks are arranged in
concentric rings so that the software can jump from "file 1" to "file 19"
without having to fast forward through files 2-18. The diskette spins like
 a record and the heads move to the correct track, providing what is
known as direct access storage.

The Drive
The major parts of a FDD include:
 Read/Write Heads: Located on both sides of a diskette, they move
together on the same assembly. The heads are not directly opposite
each other in an effort to prevent interaction between write operations
on each of the two media surfaces. The same head is used for reading
and writing, while a second, wider head is used for erasing a track just
prior to it being written. This allows the data to be written on a wider
"clean slate," without interfering with the analog data on an adjacent
track.
 Drive Motor: A very small spindle motor engages the metal hub at
the center of the diskette, spinning it at either 300 or 360 rotations per
minute (RPM).
 Stepper Motor: This motor makes a precise number of stepped
revolutions to move the read/write head assembly to the proper track
position. The read/write head assembly is fastened to the stepper
motor shaft.
 Mechanical Frame: A system of levers that opens the little protective
window on the diskette to allow the read/write heads to touch the
dual-sided diskette media. An external button allows the diskette to be
ejected, at which point the spring-loaded protective window on the
diskette closes.
 Circuit Board: Contains all of the electronics to handle the data read
from or written to the diskette. It also controls the stepper-motor
control circuits used to move the read/write heads to each track, as
well as the movement of the read/write heads toward the diskette
surface.
Writing Data on a Floppy Disk

 The following is an overview of how a floppy disk drive writes data to

a floppy disk. Reading data is very similar. Here's what happens:
 The computer program passes an instruction to the computer hardware
to write a data file on a floppy disk, which is very similar to a single
platter in a hard disk drive except that it is spinning much slower, with
far less capacity and slower access time.
 The computer hardware and the floppy-disk-drive controller start the
motor in the diskette drive to spin the floppy disk.
 The disk has many concentric tracks on each side. Each track is
divided into smaller segments called sectors, like slices of a pie.
 A second motor, called a stepper motor, rotates a worm-gear shaft (a
miniature version of the worm gear in a bench-top vise) in minute
increments that match the spacing between tracks.
The time it takes to get to the correct track is called "access time." This
stepping action (partial revolutions) of the stepper motor moves the
read/write heads like the jaws of a bench-top vise. The floppy-disk-drive
electronics know how many steps the motor has to turn to move the
read/write heads to the correct track.
 The read/write heads stop at the track. The read head checks the
prewritten address on the formatted diskette to be sure it is using the
correct side of the diskette and is at the proper track. This operation is
very similar to the way a record player automatically goes to a certain
groove on a vinyl record.
 Before the data from the program is written to the diskette, an erase
coil (on the same read/write head assembly) is energized to "clear" a
wide, "clean slate" sector prior to writing the sector data with the write
head. The erased sector is wider than the written sector -- this way, no
signals from sectors in adjacent tracks will interfere with the sector in
the track being written.
 The energized write head puts data on the diskette by magnetizing
minute, iron, bar-magnet particles embedded in the diskette surface,
very similar to the technology used in the mag stripe on the back of a
credit card. The magnetized particles have their north and south poles
oriented in such a way that their pattern may be detected and read on a
subsequent read operation.
 The diskette stops spinning. The floppy disk drive waits for the next
command.
  On a typical floppy disk drive, the small indicator light stays on
during all of the above operations.

Floppy Disk Drive Facts

 Two floppy disks do not get corrupted if they are stored together, due
to the low level of magnetism in each one.
 In your PC, there is a twist in the FDD data-ribbon cable -- this twist
tells the computer whether the drive is an A-drive or a B-drive.
 Like many household appliances, there are really no serviceable parts
in today's FDDs. This is because the cost of a new drive is
considerably less than the hourly rate typically charged to disassemble
and repair a drive.
 If you wish to redisplay the data on a diskette drive after changing a
diskette, you can simply tap the F5 key (in most Windows
applications).
 In the corner of every 3.5-inch diskette, there is a small slider. If you
uncover the hole by moving the slider, you have protected the data on
the diskette from being written over or erased.
 Floppy disks, while rarely used to distribute software (as in the past),
are still used in these applications:
– in some Sony digital cameras.
– for software recovery after a system crash or a virus attack
– when data from one computer is needed on a second computer
and the two computers are not networked
– in bootable diskettes used for updating the BIOS on a personal
computer
– in high-density form, used in the popular Zip drive

Summary of Floppy Disk Types and Specifications

The following table shows a summary of the various floppy disk

specifications provided in other sections of this chapter, for each of the five
major floppy disk types:

360 KB 1.2 MB 720 KB 1.44 MB 2.88 MB

Category Specification
5.25" 5.25" 3.5" 3.5" 3.5"
 Read/Write
Heads (Data 2 2 2 2 2
Drive Surfaces)
Spindle Motor 300 300
360 RPM 300 RPM 300 RPM
Speed RPM RPM
Minimum
250 500 250 500
Controller Controller 1 Mbits/s
Kbits/s Kbits/s Kbits/s Kbits/s
Transfer Rate
Track Density
48 96 135 135 135
(TPI)
Bit Density
5,876 9,869 8,717 17,434 34,868
(BPI)
Media
Extra-
Double High Double High
High
Density Name Density Density Density Density
Density
(DD) (HD) (DD) (HD)
(ED)
Tracks
40 80 80 80 80
(Cylinders)
Sectors Per
Geometry 9 15 9 18 36
Track/Cylinder
Total Sectors
720 2,400 1,440 2,880 5,760
Per Disk
2 2
Cluster Size 1 sector 1 sector 2 sectors
sectors sectors
File
System Maximum Root
Directory 112 224 112 224 448
Entries
 Unformatted ~480
~ 1.6 MB ~1 MB ~2 MB ~4 MB
Capacity KB
Formatted
Capacity
360 1,200 720 1,440 2,880
(binary
kilobytes)
Formatted
Capacity 368,640 1,228,800 737,280 1,474,560 2,949,120
(bytes)
File System
Capacity Overhead 6,144 14,848 7,168 16,896 17,408
(bytes)
Total Usable
Capacity 362,496 1,213,952 730,112 1,457,664 2,931,712
(bytes)
Total Usable
Capacity 354 1,185.5 713 1,423.5 2,863
(binary KB)
Total Usable
Capacity 0.346 1.158 0.696 1.390 2.796
(binary MB)

Floppy Disk Formats and Logical Structures

There are several different disk formats that are in common use on the PC
platform. Actually, "common use" is debatable, because really only one
format is used any more, and even it has limited uses these days. This
section takes a look at the different floppy disk formats used for the various
types of drives. It also looks at how the FAT file system is implemented on
floppy disks.

360 KB 5.25" Floppy

The oldest floppy disk format is the 360 KB 5.25" floppy disk. This is the
type of disk that was used in the very first IBM PCs, which in fact didn't use
a hard disk at all. The 360 KB floppy is the only format that uses 40 tracks
per side to record data; the others all use 80 tracks. This accounts for its low
capacity. Older versions of these drives were full-height models; the half-
height models were introduced later.

1.2 MB 5.25" Floppy

The high density 1.2 MB floppy disk debuted in the IBM AT in 1984, as a
standard feature (the 360 KB floppy was optional). The increase in capacity
of this disk, over 200% compared with the 360 KB version, all but obsoleted
the smaller format rather quickly. The 1.2 MB floppy disk can still read and
write 360 KB floppies, but problems can occasionally result. Since the
floppy uses a higher bit density, the 1.2 MB floppy requires a floppy disk
controller capable of 500 kbits/s data transfer Virtually all newer controllers
support this rate.

720 KB 3.5" Floppy

The original version of the 3.5" floppy disk held 720 KB of data and was
introduced in 1986. This version of the 3.5" never became very popular both
because it offered 40% less capacity than the 1.2 MB 5.25" drive, and
because it was so quickly replaced by the high density 3.5" disks.

1.44 MB 3.5" Floppy

The only floppy disk format still in wide use, the 1.44 MB 3.5" drive was
introduced by IBM in 1987 as part of its PS/2 line. Since that time they have
grown immensely popular, and this format is the standard for floppy disks
today. Virtually every PC made since 1987 uses one of these drives, and
there are many non-PC computers that will read them as well. They have
become very cheap due to the aging of the technology and the fact that they
are produced in such high volume. Their universality is what has allowed the
floppy to continue to be a default part of every PC despite their rather tiny
storage capacity compared to today's hard disks. Since the 1.44 MB uses a
higher bit density than the 720 KB, it requires a floppy disk controller
capable of 500 kbits/s data transfer. Virtually all newer controllers support
this rate.