FLO P P Y D IS K & D R IV E

ITS C O N S TR U C TIO N &

W O R K IN G
- M .K .D EV A K I

W hat is a fl
oppy disk ?
Afloppy disk, ordiskette,

is adisk storagemedium
composed of a disk of
thin and flexiblemagnetic
storagemedium, sealed
in a rectangular plastic
carrier lined with fabric
that removes dust
particles. They are read
and written by afloppy
disk drive(FDD).

U sage ofFloppy D isk :

Floppy disks are used for emergency

boots in systems lacking support for

otherbootable media, and forBIOScan
still be executed frombootable floppy
disks. If BIOS updates fail or become
corrupt, floppy drives can sometimes be
used to perform a recovery.
The floppy disk was the primary external

writable storage device used.

Types ofFloppy D isk :

According to the size, floppy disks

are generally classified into two:

5 .25 -inch diskette
3 .5- inch diskette
A normal 3inchdisk can store 1.44

megabytesof data.

Zip Drive
Zip drives were introduced by the

Iomega corporation in the mid

1990s. A zip disk was capable of
storing 100 megabytes, 250
megabytes and even 750
megabytes on a single disk. Zip
drives were mainly available as a
peripheral that could be added to
an existing system.

Types ofFloppy disk cont.

Abbr.

Floppy Disk
Type

Capacity

Info

SS/SD or 1S/1D

Single Sided,
Single Density

100 K

First
generation.
Capacity
varies

SS/DD or
1S/2D

5-1/4 inch
Single Sided,
Double
Density

180 K

DD/DD or
2D/2D

5-1/4 inch
Double Sided,
Double
Density

360 K

DD/HD or
2D/HD

5-1/4 inch
Double Sided,
High Density

1.2 Mb

DD

3.5 inch Micro

Floppy, Double

720 K

Most common
type in the
early 1980's

Hard plastic
case

Floppy D isk M akers in 1980

Diskmakers included:

Tandy, Memorex,
Dysan, MicroUniversal,
BASF, Datam,
Verbatim(Datalife), 3M,
Fuji Film, Janus,
Maxell, Highland, NEC,
Albinar, Businessland,
Kodak, IBM, Sony,
Precision, Packard
Bell, and others.

Floppy D isk :

Floppy disk Construction

A floppy is made up of a circular thin Mylar

plastic material coated with magnetic particles

sealed into 90x94 mm plastic case. Every magnetic
particles holds one data bit.
The Shutter with spring is present to avoid dust
particles from being depostied.
Inserting inside the drive, the shutter opens allows
magnetic media expose to Read / Write head.
Hub is a hole through which floppy disk is rotated
by spindle or stepper motor.
Paper ring Clean the disk by removing
microscopic bits of dust.

Floppy drive construction :

Made of ferrite type to make them

electromagnetic.
Head contacts much closer compared to HDD
due to low rpm [300 rpm]
3.5 Floppy disk has only 80 tracks per side so the
actuator doesnt need to be much precise as
HDD.
Unlike HDD, FDD has 3 heads :
One is Read/Write head
And other two is tunnel erase head to clean up after

r/w head as there is a magnetization that overlaps two

adjacent tracks while writing.

W orking ofFloppy disk drive :

1) Exposing the

2)

3)
4)

5)

Recording
Surface
Sending Signals
From the Circuit
Board
Checking for
Write Protection
Positioning the
Read/Write
Heads
Writing the Data

 Disk presence switch is the mechanism

called diskette changeline signal to

form controller board that disk has
been removed.

Floppy connectors :