Lesson 6 : Floppy Disk Drive
6.1. Learning Objectives
On completion of this lesson you will be able to describe:
Components of a floppy subsystem
Working principle of a floppy disk drive.
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6.2. Floppy Subsystem
Floppy subsystem is a component of microcomputer system. It has the following components:
Floppy diskette
Floppy drive
Disk controller
Cable.
6.3. Floppy Disk
The floppy disk is a round plastic disk with iron oxide coating on it. Data is stored in iron oxide coating. The round disk is stored in a semi-rigid square-sized plastic casing. The casing works as the disk washer. Its inside is lined with a fleecy material. Dust is carried inside the casing and on the disk. When the disk rotates, the fleecy material inside the casing picks up the dust. Thus it works as disk washer. There is one hole on the plastic casing so that data can be accessed (read or write) from the disk without removing the case. The casing also has another hole for write protection. If the hole is covered, then write is enabled (i.e., data in disk can be modified), If the hole open then no data can be written. If the disk has iron oxide coating on both sides, then it can store data on both sides. This type of disks are called ‘Double Sided’ (DS) disks. Similarly if data is stored in double density then normal, then it is called ‘Double Density’ (DD) disk. In a ‘High Density’ (HD) disk the density of data is double than DD disks. For microcomputers normally two size of floppy disks are available: 3½ inch and 5¼ inch. Among all of these variations, the most popular diskette today is the 3½inch double-sided high-density disk with data storing capability of 1.44 MB.
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