Information diskette carrier. Information capacity of a floppy disk

There is such an information carrier - a floppy disk. The information capacity of this storage is small, and this has led to the fact that it is almost not used. Although there are prospects for the revival of this technology when applying several other principles of building a storage medium. And now let's find out what information capacity the floppy has when it was used and what size it has.

Magnetic tape

At the heart of the described technology is a magnetic tape. It is a portable storage medium where data is recorded and stored. The magnetic tape is placed in a protected plastic case, which is additionally covered with a ferromagnetic layer. To read the data recorded on it, the drive is used.

In the domestic literature for its designation can be used the abbreviation of GMD. It stands for "a flexible magnetic disk". That's what a floppy disk is in fact. Information capacity of this carrier depends on the technology of creation used. But give everything in order.

Eight inches

That's how much the first disk had in diameter. Its information capacity was less than 100 KB. They were developed by IBM after they introduced their first hard drive in 1960. By 1967, the first model was created, with which the era of portable drives began.

In the first samples, a casing with a fabric gasket was used as protection. After a large number of tests, tests and additions in 1971, this invention was introduced on the market. The 8 inch floppy disks that were sold then were made from a simple plastic circle that was covered with iron oxide and placed in a cardboard envelope. Its significant drawback was the presence of serious limitations.

This was due to the fact that initially such data stores were created for microprograms, as well as software needed to diagnose the state of large computer systems. The use of drives allowed operators of electronic computing systems to quickly perform the necessary actions. To do this, it was only necessary to load the desired set of commands that the floppy had.

Information capacity at that time allowed quite efficient interaction with the computer. There was also the potential for its increase, due to the fact that the data area was originally only on one side of the floppy disk.

Size of 5.25 inches

Disks of this size were represented by the Shugart association in 1976. Originally their volume was about 100 Kilobytes of information. But over time, with the help of corporations and companies, media were released, where there was a two-way recording. In addition, the density of accommodation was doubled. The result of these manipulations was that the amount of information increased to 1.2 MB.

This development was actively promoted by IBM, which caused their wide distribution. The most popular were three types of floppy disks:

• On 160 KB;
• On 360 KB;
• To 12 MB.

3.5-inch floppy disk

The most perfect samples at the moment were offered by Sony in the beginning of 1980. Of course, there were quite a few different competitive offers, but IBM stopped at a sample of 3.5 inches. In 1984, the format of floppy disks was installed, and a more advanced and improved invention was released.

There were several principal differences in it. Among them - the presence of a rigid plastic body and the closing of the window for reading the heads with a movable metal shutter. Changes in this generation of floppy disks have not been introduced for two decades. And in March 2011, Sony was officially announced that they stop the production and sale of these drives.

For a long time people served a floppy disk - the information capacity of this storage, although not great, but it was more than enough to store electronic text documents or tables. Although, it is likely, here and there they are still used. After all, it's fair to say that there is a floppy drive on the computer of the author, and the person who writes these words looks at the pack of 3.5-inch disks that have not been used for a long time. But modern computer models, released in the last few years, no longer have the hardware capability of reading from these carriers.

Why stopped using these data carriers

The main reason for this is a small amount of stored information (the information capacity of the diskette is 1.44 MB). Its role was played by rather low reliability. So, often it was enough to drop it one time - and you could throw a floppy disk (but this is not a rule, only a frequent pattern).

In addition, presumably, there were many different reasons for its failure. Many noticed that after a trip to the subway they had their media stopped working. Others argued that this was enough to hit the sun (there is a natural question - how such a citizen it came to mind?) Or cold weather. Reliable is the information that floppy disks do not like moisture, as well as significant temperature changes (as well as the output for the recommended range).

But anyway, the information capacity of the floppy disk is maximum - only 1.44 MB, which is not enough now even to load one average music file into mp3. The maximum of modern usage is a set of text documents and tables with figures.

Features

Maybe at hand do you have a floppy disk? Information capacity does not interest us now, just look at the two small holes below (windows). One is always in the open state (it simply does not close). But the second may look different. The possibility of recording depends on this.

So, when the second window is open, it means that nothing on the diskette can be written or erased from it. But it is only necessary to open it, as soon as it becomes possible. This is a security mechanism for these carriers.

Comparison with other media

Let's have a short review on the media. What information capacity disk, hard disk, CD, DVD and flash drives? We have already successfully considered the first type of carriers.

On hard disks, we can say that the first of them possessed the amount of stored information in 2Mb. Now you can see in the media carriers for 3 TB.

CD manufacturing technology is not very promising, as it has not been possible to get a result of more than 700 MB. But compared to floppy disks - it was a breakthrough.

Optical DVD media, as a rule, are released at 4.7 GB, although those of them, where the two-way recording function is implemented, can boast an indicator of more than 8 GB.

And data storage, built using flash technology, can boast a significant amount of stored information and small size. They can be placed from several units to hundreds of GB of information. As you can see, although not much time has passed, the amount of stored data has increased by thousands and millions of times.