How Does a Floppy Drive Save Information?
What is a Floppy Drive? Like CD-ROMs, floppy drives are used to store and backup data off the computer hard drive. Floppy drives are one of the oldest types of data storage, dating back to the mid-1980s, and have the smallest storage capacity of any removable storage device available. 3.5-inch diskettes hold 1.44 megabytes and are subject to data loss when exposed to magnetic fields. Because of this, they have become less popular since CD-ROMs became widely available. Retrieving Data Floppy drives use magnetized disks, known as “heads,” to store data. The process of accessing data on a floppy disk is similar to that for cassette and VHS tapes. When you want to access a certain piece of data on the disk, the floppy drive has to “rewind” or “fast forward” to the right spot, by spinning the head. The head contains tiny, magnetically charged pieces of iron that the floppy drive reads and interprets as data. Saving Data When changes are made to the data on the disk, the floppy drive spins t
