A flood of floppy facts
The FDD, which is better known as the Floppy Disk Drive, has been an integral part of personal computers for over 20 years. Even though it is loosing its relevance in a world run with gigabytes of data and dominated by heavy multimedia, the FDD is still an important piece of hardware in most PCs we use.

With the introduction of CD-RW technology, FDDs faced a setback and they are expected to be out of the scene in a couple of years, but until that actually happens, you will need to know your way with FDDs if you are to survive in the cyber world.

The first Floppy Disk Drive, which was invented by Alan Shugart at IBM in 1967, used an eight-inch disk. This evolved into a 5.25-inch disk that was used on the first IBM Personal Computer in August 1981 (and as the size of the disk kept getting smaller, they were called “diskettes”). It was this 5.25-inch disk that gave the name “Floppy” to this type of disk because its case was encased in a very flexible plastic envelope - unlike the harder plastic covers of the 3.5-inch disks. The 5.25-inch disks could contain only 360 kilobytes of data as opposed to the capacity of a standard 3.5-inch floppy disk to hold 1474 kilobytes.

Improvements related to read/write heads and magnetic recording media paved the way for the less flexible, 3.5-inch, 1.44-megabyte (MB) capacity FDD that is in use today. During those early years, computers had both 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch Floppy Disk Drives, but the 5.25-inch version became less popular due to its lower capacity and the vulnerability of the diskette’s recording surface as it could become contaminated through the open access area.

A floppy disk has a lot in common with a cassette tape. They are both made from thin plastic that is coated with a magnetic material on both sides. However, floppy disks are shaped like disks rather than long thin ribbons of magnetic tape. In cassette tapes, if you want to listen to a song at the end of the tape, you are forced to fast-forward through the entire tape to get to its end.

The tracks in a floppy disk though, are arranged in concentric rings so that the software can jump from the beginning to the end, without having to fast forward through whatever is in the middle. The diskette spins like a record and the heads move to the correct track, providing what is known as direct access storage (as opposed to sequential access on a cassette tape).

The read/write heads do not touch the diskette media of a Floppy disk when the heads are traveling between tracks. Electronic optics check for the presence of an opening in the lower corner of a 3.5-inch diskette (or a notch in the side of a 5.25-inch diskette) to see if the user wants to prevent data from being written on it.

The major parts of a FDD are:
* Read/Write Heads: Located on both sides of a diskette, they move together on the same assembly. The heads are not directly opposite each other in an effort to prevent interaction between write operations on each of the two media surfaces. The same head is used for reading and writing, while a second, wider head is used for erasing a track just prior to it being written. This allows the data to be written on a wider “clean slate,” without interfering with the analog data on an adjacent track.

* Drive Motor: A very small spindle motor engages the metal hub at the centre of the diskette, spinning it at either 300 or 360 rotations per minute (RPM). * Stepper Motor: This motor makes a precise number of stepped revolutions to move the read/write head assembly to the proper track position. The read/write head assembly is fastened to the stepper motor shaft.

* Mechanical Frame: A system of levers that opens the little protective window on the diskette to allow the read/write heads to touch the dual-sided diskette media. An external button allows the diskette to be ejected, at which point the spring-loaded protective window on the diskette closes.

* Circuit Board: Contains all of the electronics to handle the data read from or written to the diskette. It also controls the stepper-motor control circuits used to move the read/write heads to each track, as well as the movement of the read/write heads toward the diskette surface. Source: HowStuffWorks.com

News in brief

• Sharp Corporation unveiled its Notebook Computer - Actius RD3D which can display 3-dimensional images without any need for the user to wear 3-D goggles or special software.
• A pioneering experiment conducted at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina USA has shown that monkeys can control a robot arm as naturally as their own limbs using only brain signals. Experts believe the experiment’s success bodes well for future devices for humans that are controlled solely by thought.
• Portal vendors are changing their products into independent architecture layers that span a broad set of infrastructure pieces. As a result, the technology is enabling a new style of integration conducted by end-users at the browser level.
• Microsoft may put back the release of Windows Longhorn until 2006

Some interesting things about FDDs:

Two floppy disks do not get corrupted if they are stored together, due to the low level of magnetism in each one.

In your PC, there is a twist in the FDD data-ribbon cable — this twist tells the computer whether the drive is an A-drive or a B-drive.

Like many household appliances, there are really no serviceable parts in today’s FDDs. This is because the cost of a new drive is considerably less than the service cost to disassemble and repair a drive.

If you wish to redisplay the data on a diskette drive after changing a diskette, you can simply tap the F5 key (in most Windows applications).

In the corner of every 3.5-inch diskette, there is a small slider. If you uncover the hole by moving the slider, you have protected the data on the diskette from being written over or erased.

• Floppy disks, while rarely used to distribute software (as in the past), are still used in these applications:
• In some Sony digital cameras
• For software recovery after a system crash or a virus attack
• When data from one computer is needed on a second computer and the two computers are not networked
• In bootable diskettes used for updating the BIOS on a personal computer
• In high-density form, used in the popular Zip drive

Improve your computer literacy
Warez - Pronounced wayrz or wayrss. Commercial software that has been pirated and made available to the public via a bulletin board system or the Internet. Typically, the pirate has figured out a way to de-activate the copy protection or registration scheme used by the software. Note that the use and distribution of warez software is illegal. In contrast, shareware and freeware may be freely copied and distributed.

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