Upgrading and Repairing PCs

Chapter 11. Floppy Disk Storage

This chapter examines the standard types of floppy disk drives and disks that have been used in PCs since the beginning. It explores the various types of drives and disks, how they function, and how to properly install and service them. The high-capacity floppy drives such as the SuperDisk (LS-120 and LS-240) and flash memory devices such as USB keychain are covered separately in Chapter 12, "High-Capacity Removable Storage." Magnetic storage in general—that is, how data is actually stored on the disk media—is covered in Chapter 9, "Magnetic Storage Principles."

Although no longer used for primary storage, the floppy is still sometimes used as a system installation and configuration device, especially when troubleshooting. In older systems that don't support the El Torito CD-ROM boot specification, the floppy drive is the only way to load an operating system from scratch or to run bootable diagnostics. Newer systems that support El Torito (bootable CDs) don't require floppy drives because they can boot operating systems and diagnostics directly from a CD.

Starting in 2002, many companies started selling systems without floppy drives. This started with notebook computers, where internal floppy drives were first eliminated and replaced with external (normally USB) drives. Most newer notebooks no longer include a floppy drive with the system, offering only external USB models as an option. In 2003, many desktop system manufacturers likewise stopped including floppy drives in their standard system configurations. In March 2003, Dell dropped the floppy drive as a standard feature from all but one of its desktop models and instead offers it as an optional extra.

Many alternatives to floppy storage are available. Both Zip and LS-120/LS-240 (SuperDisk) drives have failed in the marketplace as floppy drive replacements in new PCs, but a new standard called Mt. Rainier allows CD-RW and DVD+-RW drives to serve as replacements for the floppy. Prior to Mt. Rainier, the CD/DVD drives lacked defect management, as well as native OS support.

Many people are also now using USB flash memory devices, often called thumb drives or keychain drives, to transport small amounts of data (up to 128MB) between systems. Floppy drives remain useful for data recovery or computer forensics, where data retrieval from older media is often necessary. Even though I don't use floppy drives much for storing new information, I maintain systems with both 5 1/4'' and 3 1/2'' drives so that I can read data from older media in a forensics or data recovery situation.