The Floppy Drive

Just as hard drives, floppies are both, input and output devices in that data can be written to as well as retrieved from.

With all that progress of computer systems and the speed it all happens, you might ask why floppy drives have not changed over the years. The reason is not that the technology can't be improved, but rather the fact that EVERY computer system of any kind and make all over the world has one. Conventional 1.44MB 3.5" floppies are so wide spread that it is impossible to change the standard over night. Therefore today's floppy drives are not really called floppies, but Zip, LS or Super Floppy, etc.. You might have heard one or the other name before. They are all sold under different names, but if you'd open up a disk, you'd only find the same old 3.5" disk housing inside. Truth is, floppy drives HAVE come a long way! As much as 250MB can be squeezed onto a modern floppy disk, but with the name 'Floppy Disk' globally known to only accept 1.44MB, these drives found different names for themselves.

Even though old and surpassed, today’s 1.44MB HD (High Density) floppy disk drives are still a necessity for booting and file portability. Never pay more than £15.00 for a floppy drive though and watch out for those new 200MB (and more) Floppy drives, some of them are already backwards compatible and will eventually replace conventional floppies.

Like the hard drive, the floppy drive connects to the motherboard via a ribbon cable. Unlike with IDE devices though, where each device is told where it ranks in the IDE hierarchy using jumpers, the floppy drive does not have any settings of its own. Instead it depends on the connector you use. Every floppy ribbon cable has two 34pin connectors. One connector is always very close to the location where the ribbon has a few cables twisted. That is the connector you should use if you want your floppy drive to be drive A. The other connector is for drive B. Don't forget to tell your BIOS too, which drive you have installed.