The history of disk drives is long and complex. In this tutorial, we begin our exploration by first looking briefly at the history and development of disk drives. We start with the most basic of drives (the floppy disk drive), and continue through the early hard disk drives, examining their complexities and limitations along the way.
Lesson 1: Floppy Disk Drives
This tutorial is all about drives-disk drives-which come in assorted sizes and shapes. The first disk drives were physically large, small in capacity (limited in the amount of data they could store), and very expensive. Today, disks drives are physically small, large in capacity, and very inexpensive.
The history of disk drives is long and complex. In this tutorial, we begin our exploration by first looking briefly at the history and development of disk drives. We start with the most basic of drives (the floppy disk drive), and continue through the early hard disk drives, examining their complexities and limitations along the way.
The most basic input device is the floppy disk drive. It is perhaps the only computer component that has retained its original technology. Other than increased storage capacity and the adoption of a hard plastic shell, the floppy disk drive still works essentially the same way (in terms of cabling and BIOS configuration) it did 10 years ago. In this lesson, we explore this venerable standard.
After this lesson, you will be able to:
- Describe floppy disk drive technology.
- Troubleshoot a floppy disk drive problem.
Estimated lesson time: 20 minutes
Before You Begin
Before starting this tutorial, you should review the discussions of memory, hexadecimal notation, and BIOS operations in tutorials 6 and 7.