FLOPPY DRIVE

What is a floppy?

A floppy disk, or diskette, is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles. They are read and written by a floppy disk drive (FDD).

Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch (200 mm) media and later in 5.25-inch (133 mm) and 3.5-inch (89 mm) sizes, were a ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s well into the first decade of the 21st century.

By 2010, computer motherboards were rarely manufactured with floppy drive support; 3 1⁄2" floppies could be used as an external USB drive, but 5 1⁄4", 8", and non-standard drives could only be handled by old equipment.

While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy industrial computer equipment, they have been superseded by data storage methods with much greater capacity, such as USB flash drives, portable external hard disk drives, optical discs, memory cards, and computer networks.

The memory capacity of a floppy is in between 350KB–2.88 MB.

What is a floppy disk drive?

Basically, a floppy disk drive reads and writes data to a small, circular piece of metal-coated plastic similar to audio cassette tape. The floppy drive reads data from, and writes data to, a small disk. The most common type of floppy drive is the 3.5" drive, followed by the 5.25" drive, among other sizes. A traditional 3.5" floppy drive is about the size and weight of a few decks of cards.

Components of a floppy disk drive:

1)      Face plate

2)      Spindle motor

3)      Head

4)      Head actuator motor

5)      Logic board

6)      Connectors

Face plate:

The front of the floppy drive has a slot to insert the disk into and a small button to eject it. This part of a floppy drive is called the face plate and this is the only part that is exposed out of the cabinet.

Spindle motor:

This motor is place under the thin film disk. Its purpose is to rotate the thin film disk. A spindle motor generally has rpm of 3500/4500/5400.

Head:

It is a small pointer. It is used to read and write data from the floppy. The head can access every surface of a hard disk with the help of spindle motor and head actuator motor.

Head actuator motor:

It is connected to the head with an arm. The function of the head actuator motor is to move the head from inner edge to outer edge of the floppy in the floppy disk drive.

Connectors:

Once the new floppy drive has been connected into the computer, connect the floppy interface cable (small gray flat cable) to the back of the floppy drive. Your computer floppy cable has three connections or a twist in the cable.

Today, most computers and computer floppy disk drives have cables that only have two connections: one for the motherboard and the other for the floppy disk drive A. If your cable only has two connections, the above picture does not apply.

Once the floppy interface cable has been connected to the computer, connect the floppy power cable to the back of the floppy disk drive. This cable is a small power cable when compared to the other power cables coming from the power supply.

Power port:

The power port of floppy disk drive consist of 4 delicate pins. The floppy disk drive requires some electrical power to run the platter, spindle motor and the head actuator motor. This power is supplied to the hard disk by the SMPS after filtering the given supply of 230volts to the required amount of power.

Data transfer:-

The data in the floppy disk is accessed by the CPU through the data transfer port given to the floppy disk drive. This port is connected to the mother board directly by an IDE data cable. This port consists of 34 delicate pins in two rows.

The pins in the cable toward which the twist is present is connected to the floppy drive and the other end is given in the mother board.