FLOPPY DRIVES

The invention of the floppy drive is generally credited to Alan Shugart in 1967 while he was employed by IBM. The original floppy was an 8 inch disk enclosed in a square, fabric-lined cardboard container. Shugart intoduced the minifloppy (5 ¼ inch) from his own company, Shugart Associates, in 1976 and it became the standard floppy drive for most personal computers. The microfloppy, the 3½" floppy diskette with the hard plastic cover that we use today, was introduced by Sony in 1983 and Apple Computer started putting it in their Macintosh computers in 1984. IBM followed suit by putting it into all their computers in 1986.

The original minifloppy disks were single sided - that is, they could only read or write to one side of the disk at a time (the bottom side, if you are interested in trivia) - and could hold 160 (later 180) Kb of data. That was doubled when they went to a double sided drive and the diskettes were called (suprise!) Double Sided, Double Density (DS-DD). The drives soon doubled the density again, for a total of 1.2 Mb, and were called Double Sided, High Density drives (DS-HD).

The microfloppies (3½" drives) went pretty much the same way; the original drives were DS-DD for a total of 720 Kb but the standard soon became DS-HD for a total of 1.44 Mb - todays standard. The 3½" disk format also supports a 2.88 Mb drive but it has never been very popular and about the only place you ever see it is in some IBM products. The 2.88 Mb drive is backwards compatible to the 1.44 Mb and 720 Mb floppies and all can be used in the drive.

The read/write heads of a floppy drive ride on the floppy disk itself; that is, they are in physical contact with the diskette. That makes keeping the diskette clean very important - vital, even. You never want anything, especially dirty, greasy fingers, to come into contact with the surface of your floppy disks. If the read/write heads get dirty, that would cause them to ride higher above the surface of the diskette - just a tiny little bit, probably, but that's enough to cause errors. It is recommended that the heads be cleaned every so often - the usual recommendation is after every 40 hours of use. That could be a lifetime! I doubt that most of us have ever used a floppy drive for 40 hours - that much use is hard to imagine. I'd say that if you experience any read/write errors, it might be time to pick up a head cleaning kit from your local computer store (or Radio Shack, or even your local WalMart, probably) and give it a shot. You're not talking about much money and it sure won't hurt anything - especially if you live in a dusty climate.

With the older 5¼" diskettes, writing on the dikette label with a ballpoint pen could sometimes damage the diskette inside the cover. Of course, spilled coffee or soft drink could ruin a diskette in a hurry.

The thing that ruins most diskettes most often, however, is a magnetic field. Your color monitor (and all color TVs) have a degaussing coil around the face of the tube that demagnetizes the shadow mask every time you turn the monitor (or TV set) on. Keeping diskettes anywhere within one foot of the face of your monitor (or a TV, for that matter) will expose them to a strong magnetic field every time the unit is turned on. That's good if you want to permanently and completely erase a diskette - not so good if you want to save what's on the diskette. Other sources of strong magnetic fields are electric motors, such as those found in fans, vacuum cleaners, air conditioners or electric pencil sharpeners. Audio speakers also contain strong magnets, although those designed for PC use are usually well shielded.

One thing I found very interesting while researching this subject was the protection of the data on your diskettes while going through an airport. ALWAYS feed your diskettes through the x-ray machine, NEVER hand carry them. X-rays have no effect on your diskettes - NONE WHAT SO EVER! - whereas if you hand carry them, you are walking through a metal detector which uses a magnetic field to do its job. It's a weak magnetic field, true, but any kind of magnetic field is worse than no magnetic field, when it comes to protecting the data on your diskettes. Same thing with your laptop, if you have one of them with you. X-rays won't hurt it at all, but the metal detector can't be good for the data on your hard drive. Why take a chance?

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