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Apabila [[komputer mikro]] pertama dimajukan pada [[1970-an]], cakera liut 8-inci diletakkan sebagai salah satu peranti storan pukal berkelajuan tinggi yang hampir mampu dibeli oleh pasaran sasaran (individual dan business kecil). Sistem operasi komputer mikro pertama, [[sistem operasi CP/M|CP/M]], pada asalnya dijual pada cakera liut 8-inci . Bagaimanapun pemancunya masih mahal, biasanya lebih mahal berbanding komputer yang dilekatkan padanya pada masa itu, dengan itu kebanyakan mesin era tersebut sebaliknya menggunakan tape keset.
Ini bertukar dengan penerimaan piwaian pertama bagi cakera liut, [[ECMA|Ecma International]]-59, dikarang oleh Jim O'Reilly dari [[Burroughs]], Helmuth Hack dari [[BASF]] dan yang lain. <!--O'Reilly mencipta rekod bagi set a record for maneuvering this document through ECMA's approval process, with the standard sub-committee being formed in one meeting of ECMA and approval of a draft standard in the next meeting three months later. This standard later formed the basis for the ANSI standard, too. Standardization brought together a variety of competitors to make media to a single interchangeable standard, and allowed rapid quality and cost improvement. --->
Pada masa ini Alan Shugart telah meninggalkan IBM, berpindah ke [[Memorex]] untuk tempoh masa yang singkat, dan sekali lagi pada [[1973]] untuk mengasaskan [[Shugart Associates]]. Mereka mulai berusaha memperbaiki format 8-inch  sediaada, akhirnya menghasilkan sistem baru 800 KB. Bagaimanapun keuntungan sukar dihasilkan dan pada tahun [[1974]] dia disingkirkan dari syarikatnya sendiri.
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Burroughs Corporation was meanwhile developing a high-performance dual-sided 8-inch drive at their Glenrothes, Scotland, factory. With a capacity of 1 MB, this unit exceeded IBM's drive capacity by 4 times, and was able to provide enough space to run all the software and store data on the new Burrough's B80 data entry system, which incidentally had the first VLSI disk controller in the industry. The dual-sided 1MB floppy entered production in 1975, but was plagued by an industry problem, poor media quality. There were few tools available to test media for 'bit-shift' on the inner tracks, which made for high error rates, and the result was a substantial investment by Burroughs in a media tester design that they then gave to media makers as a quality control tool, leading to a vast improvement in yields.
===The 5¼-inch minifloppy===
[[Imej:Floppy disk 5.25 inch.JPG|right|thumbnail|200px|A 5¼-inch disk with a partly exposed magnetic medium spun about a central hub for reading. The flexible plastic cover contains a cloth inner liner to brush dust from the medium.]]
Pada tahun 1975, kilang Burroughs di Glenrothes memajukan prototaip pemancu 5.25-inci, didorong oleh keperluan untuk mengatasi ciri-ciri pengembangan tidak sekata oleh cakera 8-inci yang lebih besar disebabkan oleh perubahan kelembapan,, dan, bagi menunjukkan pengetahuan bahawa division barangan rakaman audio IBM sedang mempamerkan mesin diktation yang menggunakan cakera 5.25 inci. In one of the industry's historic gaffes, Burroughs corporate management decided it would be "too inexpensive" to make enough money, and shelved the program.
In [[1976]] one of Shugart [Assoc.]'s employees, Jim Adkisson, was approached by [[An Wang]] of [[Wang Laboratories]], who felt that the 8-inch format was simply too large for the desktop [[word processing]] machines he was developing at the time. After meeting in a bar in Boston, Adkisson asked Wang what size he thought the disks should be, and Wang pointed to a napkin and said "about that size". Adkisson took the napkin back to California, found it to be 5¼ inches (13 cm) wide, and developed a new drive of this size storing 110 KB.
The 5¼-inch drive was considerably less expensive than 8-inch drives from IBM, and soon started appearing on CP/M machines. At one point Shugart Assoc. was producing 4,000 drives a day. By [[1978]] there were more than 10 manufacturers producing 5¼-inch floppy drives, and the format quickly displaced the 8-inch from most applications. These early drives read only one side of the disk, leading to the popular budget approach of cutting a second write-enable slot and index hole into the carrier envelope and flipping it over (thus, the "[[flippy disk]]") to use the other side for additional storage.
[[Tandon Corporation|Tandon]] introduced a double-sided drive in 1978, doubling the capacity, and a new "double density" format increased it again, to 360 KB.
For most of the [[1970s]] and [[1980s]] the floppy drive was the primary storage device for [[microcomputer]]s. Since these micros had no hard drive, the OS was usually from one floppy disk, which was then removed and replaced by another one containing the application. Some machines using two disk drives (or one dual drive) allowed the user to leave the OS disk in place and simply change the application disks as needed. In the early 1980s, 96 track-per-inch drives appeared, increasing the capacity from 360 to 720 KB. These did not see widespread use, as they were not supported by IBM in its PCs. (Another oddball format was used by [[Digital Equipment Corporation]]'s [[Rainbow-100]], [[DECmate-II]] and [[Pro-350]]. It held 400 KB on a single side by using 96 tracks-per-inch and cramming 10 sectors per track.) In [[1984]], along with the [[IBM PC/AT]], the quad density disk appeared, which used 96 tracks per inch combined with a higher density magnetic media to provide 1200KB of storage (normally and misleadingly referred to as 1.2 [[megabyte]]s). Since the usual (very expensive) [[hard disk]] held 10–20 megabytes at the time, this was considered quite spacious.
By the end of the 1980s, the 5¼-inch disks had been superseded by the 3½-inch disks. Though 5¼-inch drives were still available, as were disks, they faded in popularity as the 1990s began. On most new computers the 5¼-inch drives were optional equipment. By the mid-1990s the drives had virtually disappeared as the 3½-inch disk became the preeminent floppy disk.
===The 3-inch compact floppy disk===
[[Image:Compact Floppy.jpg|right|thumbnail|150px| The CF has a harder casing than a 3½" floppy; the metal door is opened by a sliding plastic tab on the right side.]]
A now unused semi-proprietary format, the 3-inch Compact Floppy was a format used mainly on the [[Amstrad CPC]], PCW and [[ZX Spectrum]] computers while these machines were still supported, as well as on a number of exotic and obscure CP/M systems such as the Einstein computers and occasionally on [[MSX]] systems in some regions. The disk format itself had no more capacity than the more popular (and cheap) 5¼" floppies, but was more reliable thanks to its hard casing (some reviews at the time reported driving over them with no problems).
Their main problems were their high prices, due to their quite elaborate and complex case mechanisms and low nominal capacities, as well as their being bound to using specifically designed drives, which were very hard to repair or replace.
Eventually, the format died out along with the computer systems that used it.
===The 3½-inch micro floppy diskette===
[[Image:Floppy disk 90mm.JPG|right|thumbnail|200px|The non-[[ferromagnetic]] metal sliding door protects the 3½-inch floppy disk's recording medium.]]
Throughout the early 1980s the limitations of the 5¼-inch format were starting to become clear as machines grew in power. A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2-inch, 2½-inch, 3-inch and 3½-inch (50, 60, 75 and 90 mm) all being offered by various companies. They all shared a number of advantages over the older format, including a small [[form factor]] and a rigid case with a slideable [[Write protection|write protect]] catch. [[Amstrad]] incorporated a 3-inch 180 KB single-sided disk drive into their [[Amstrad CPC|CPC]] and [[Amstrad PCW|PCW]] lines, and this format and the drive mechanism was later "inherited" by the [[ZX Spectrum|ZX Spectrum +3]] computer after Amstrad bought [[Sinclair Research]]. Later models of the PCW featured double-sided, quad density drives while all 3-inch media were double-sided in nature with single-sided drive owners able to flip the disk over to use the other side. Media in this format remained expensive and it never caught on with only three manufacturers producing media - Amstrad, [[Tatung]] and [[Maxell]].
Things changed dramatically in [[1984]] when [[Apple Computer]] selected the [[Sony|Sony]] 90.0 × 94.0 mm format for their [[Apple Macintosh|Macintosh]] computers, thereby forcing it to become the standard format in the United States. (This is yet another example of a "silent" change from metric to imperial units; this product was advertised and became popularly known as the 3½-inch disk, emphasizing the fact that it was smaller than the existing 5¼-inch.) The first computer to use this format was the [[HP-150]] of [[1983]]. By 1989 the 3½-inch was outselling the 5¼-inch.
The 3½-inch disks had, by way of their rigid case's slide-in-place metal cover, the significant advantage of being much better protected against unintended physical contact with the disk surface when the disk was handled outside the disk drive. When the disk was inserted, a part inside the drive moved the metal cover aside, giving the drive's read/write heads the necessary access to the magnetic recording surfaces. (Adding the slide mechanism resulted in a slight departure from the previous square outline. The rectangular shape had the additional merit that it made it impossible to insert the disk sideways by mistake, as had indeed been possible with earlier formats.)
Like the 5¼-inch, the 3½-inch disk underwent an evolution of its own. They were originally offered in a 360 KB single-sided and 720 KB double-sided double-density format (the same as then-current 5¼-inch disks). A newer "high-density" format, displayed as "HD" on the disks themselves and storing 1440 KB of data, was introduced in the mid-80s. IBM used it on their [[PS/2]] series introduced in [[1987]]. Apple started using "HD" in [[1988]], on the [[Macintosh IIx]]. Another advance in the oxide coatings allowed for a new "extended-density" ("ED") format at 2880 KB (normally and misleadingly referred to as 2.88 MB) introduced on the second generation [[NeXT Computer]]s in 1991, and on IBM PS/2 model 57 also in 1991, but by the time it was available it was already too small to be a useful advance over 1440 KB, and never became widely used. The 3½-inch drives sold more than a decade later still used the same format that was standardized in 1989, in [[ISO 9529]]-1,2.
Not long after the 2880 KB format was declared DOA by the market, it became obvious that users had a requirement to move around ever increasing amounts of data. A number of products surfaced, but only a few maintained any level of backward compatibility with 3½-inch disks. Insite Peripherals' "[[Floptical]]" was the first off the blocks, offering 20, 40 and ultimately 80 MB devices that would still read and write 1440KB disks. However, the drives did not connect to a normal floppy disk controller, meaning that many older PCs were unable to boot up from a disk in a Floptical drive. This again adversely affected adoption rates.
Announced in [[1995]], the "Super Disk" drive, often seen with the brand names [[Matsushita]] (Panasonic) and Imation, had an initial capacity of 120 MB. It was subsequently upgraded to 240 MB. Not only could the drive read and write 1440 KB disks, but the last versions of the drives could write 32 MB onto a normal 1440 KB disk (see note below)<!-- what note?-->. Unfortunately, popular opinion held the Super Disk disks to be quite unreliable, though no more so than the [[Zip drive|Zip drives]] and [[SyQuest Technology]] offerings of the same period. This again, true or otherwise, crippled adoption.
Thus 3½-inch disks are still widely available. As of [[2005]] 3½-inch drives are still common equipment on most new PCs other than lap-tops. On others, they are either optional equipment, or can be purchased as after-market equipment. However, with the advent of other portable storage options, such as [[Zip drive|Zip disks]], [[USB]] storage devices, and [[CD-R|recordable]] or [[CD-RW|rewritable]] [[Compact_disc|CDs]] the 3½-inch disk is obsolescent. Some manufacturers have stopped offering 3½-inch drives on new computers as standard equipment. The Apple Macintosh, which popularized the format in 1984, began to move away from it in [[1998]] with the [[iMac]] model. Possibly prematurely, since the basic model iMac of the time only had a CD-ROM drive giving users no easy access to removable media. This made USB-connected floppy drives a popular accessory for the early iMacs. In [[February]] [[2003]], [[Dell, Inc.]] announced that they would no longer include floppy drives on their [[Dell Dimension]] home computers.
The formatted capacity of 3½-inch high-density floppies was originally 1440 [[kibibyte]]s (KiB), or 1,474,560 bytes. This is equivalent to 1.41 [[mebibyte|MiB]] (1.47 MB decimal). However, their capacity is usually reported as 1.44 MB by diskette manufacturers.
In some places, especially [[South Africa]], 3½-inch floppy disks have commonly been called ''stiffies'' or ''stiffy disks'', because of their "stiff" (rigid) cases, which are contrasted with the flexible "floppy" cases of 5¼-inch floppies.
Even if such a format was hardly officially supported on any system, it is possible to "force" a 3½ floppy disk drive to be recognized by the system as a 5¼ 360KB or 1200KB one (on [[Personal computer|PC]]s and compatibles, this can be done by simply changing the [[CMOS]] [[BIOS]] settings) and thus format and read non-standard disk formats, such as a double sided 360KB 3½ disk. Possible applications include data exchange with obsolete CP/M systems, for example with an [[Amstrad CPC]].
== Struktur ==
[[Image:5.25 in. floppy disk drive top.jpg|thumbnail|right|250px|A user inserts the floppy disk, medium opening first, into a 5¼-inch floppy disk drive (pictured, an internal model) and moves the lever down (by twisting on this model) to close the drive and engage the motor and heads with the disk.]]
The 5¼-inch disk had a large circular hole in the center for the spindle of the drive and a small oval aperture in both sides of the plastic to allow the heads of the drive to read and write the data. The magnetic medium could be spun by rotating it from the middle hole. A small notch on the right hand side of the disk would identify whether the disk was read-only or writable, detected by a mechanical switch or [[photo transistor]] above it. Another LED/phototransistor pair located near the center of the disk could detect a small hole once per rotation, called the index hole, in the magnetic disk. It was used to detect the start of each [[track]], and whether or not the disk rotated at the correct speed; some operating systems, such as [[Apple DOS]], did not use index sync, and often the drives designed for such systems lacked the index hole sensor. Disks of this type were said to be ''soft [[sector]]'' disks. Very early 8-inch and 5¼-inch disks also had physical holes for each sector, and were termed ''[[hard sectoring|hard sector]]'' disks. Inside the disk were two layers of fabric designed to reduce friction between the media and the outer casing, with the media sandwiched in the middle. The outer casing was usually a one-part sheet, folded double with flaps glued or spot-melted together. A catch was lowered into position in front of the drive to prevent the disk from emerging, as well as to raise or lower the spindle.
The 3½-inch disk is made of two pieces of rigid plastic, with the fabric-medium-fabric sandwich in the middle. The front has only a label and a small aperture for reading and writing data, protected by a spring-loaded metal cover, which is pushed back on entry into the drive.
[[Image:Floppy disk drive top (cover removed).jpg|left|thumbnail|250px|The 3½-inch floppy disk drive automatically engages when the user inserts a disk, and disengages and ejects with the press of a button, or by motor on the [[Apple Macintosh]].]]
The reverse has a similar covered aperture, as well as a hole to allow the spindle to connect into a metal plate glued to the media. Two holes, bottom left and right, indicate the write-protect status and high-density disk correspondingly, a hole meaning protected or high density, and a covered gap meaning write-enabled or low density. (Incidentally, the write-protect and high-density holes on a 3½-inch disk are spaced exactly as far apart as the holes in punched [[A4 paper size|A4]] paper (8 [[cm]]), allowing write-protected floppies to be clipped into European [[ring binder]]s.) A notch top right ensures that the disk is inserted correctly, and an arrow top left indicates the direction of insertion. The drive usually has a button that, when pressed, will spring the disk out at varying degrees of force. Some would barely make it out of the disk drive; others would shoot out at a fairly high speed. In a majority of drives, the ejection force is provided by the spring that holds the cover shut, and therefore the ejection speed is dependent on this spring. In [[IBM PC compatible|PC]]-type machines, a floppy disk can be inserted or ejected manually at any time (evoking an error message or even lost data in some cases), as the drive is not continuously monitored for status and so programs can make assumptions that don't match actual status (ie, disk 123 is still in the drive and has not been altered by any other agency). With Apple [[Apple Macintosh|Macintosh]] computers, disk drives are continuously monitored by the OS; a disk inserted is automatically searched for content and one is ejected only when the software agrees the disk should be ejected. This kind of disk drive (starting with the slim "Twiggy" drives of the late Apple "Lisa") does not have an eject button, but uses a motorized mechanism to eject disks; this action is triggered by the OS software (e.g. the user dragged the "drive" icon to the "trash can" icon). Should this not work (as in the case of a power failure or drive malfunction), one can insert a straight-bent [[paperclip]] into a small hole at the drive's front, thereby forcing the disk to eject (similar to that found on CD/DVD drives).
The 3-inch disk bears a lot of similarity to the 3½-inch type, with some unique and somehow curious features. One example is the rectangular-shaped plastic casing, almost taller than a 3½-inch disk, but narrower, and more than twice as thick, almost the size of a standard [[compact audio cassette]]. This made the disk look more like a greatly oversized present day [[memory card]] or a standard [[PCMCIA]] notebook expansion card, rather than a floppy disk. Despite the size, the actual 3-inch magnetic-coated disk occupied less than 50 per cent of the space inside the casing, the rest being used by the complex protection and sealing mechanisms implemented on the disks. Such mechanisms were largely responsible for the thickness, length and high costs of the 3-inch disks. On the Amstrad machines the disks were typically flipped over to use both sides, as opposed to being truly double-sided. Double-sided mechanisms were available, but rare.
==Compatibility==
In general, different physical sizes of floppy disks are incompatible by definition, and disks can only be loaded on the correct size of drive. There were some drives available with both 3½-inch and 5¼-inch slots that were popular in the transition period between the sizes.
However there are many more subtle incompatibilities within each form factor. Consider, for example the following Apple/IBM 'schism': Apple Macintosh computers can read, write and format IBM PC-format 3½-inch diskettes, provided suitable software is installed. However, many IBM-compatible computers use floppy disk drives that are unable to read (or write) Apple-format disks. For details on this, see the section "More on floppy disk formats".
Within the world of IBM-compatible computers, the three densities of 3½-inch floppy disks are partly compatible. Higher density drives are built to read, write and even format lower density media without problems, provided the correct media is used for the density selected. However, if by whatever means a diskette is formatted at the wrong density, the result is a substantial risk of data loss due to magnetic mismatch between oxide and the drive head's writing attempts.
The situation was even more complex with 5¼-inch diskettes. The head gap of a 1200 KB drive is shorter than that of a 360 KB drive, but will format, read and write 360 KB diskettes with apparent success. A blank 360 KB disk formatted and written on a 1200 KB drive can be taken to a 360 KB drive without problems, similarly a disk formatted on a 360 KB drive can be used on a 1200 KB drive. But a disk written on a 360 KB drive and updated on a 1200KB drive becomes permanently unreadable on any 360 KB drive, owing to the incompatibility of the track widths. There are several other 'bad' scenarios.
Prior to the problems with head and track size, there was a period when just trying to figure out which side of a "single sided" diskette was the right side was a problem. Both [[Radio Shack]] and [[Apple computer|Apple]] used 360 KB single sided 5¼-inch disks, and both sold disks labeled "single sided" were certified for use on only one side, even though they in fact were coated in magnetic material on both sides. The irony was that the disks would work on both Radio Shack and Apple machines, yet the Radio Shack [[TRS-80]] Model I computers used one side and the [[Apple II family|Apple II]] machines used the other, regardless of whether there was software available which could make sense of the other format.
For quite a while in the 1980s, users could purchase a special tool called a "disk notcher" which would allow them to cut a second "write unprotect" notch in these diskettes and thus use them as "flippies" (either inserted as intended or upside down): both sides could now be written on and thereby the data storage capacity was doubled. Other users made do with a steady hand and a [[hole punch]]. For re-protecting a disk side, one would simply place a piece of opaque tape over the notch/hole in question. These "flippy disk procedures" were followed by owners of practically every home-computer single sided disk drives. Proper disk labels became quite important for such users.
== More on floppy disk formats ==
=== Using the disk space efficiently ===
In general, data is written to floppy disks in a series of sectors, angular blocks of the disk, and in tracks, concentric rings at a constant radius, e.g. the HD format of 3½-inch floppy disks uses 512 bytes per sector, 18 sectors per track, 80 tracks per side and two sides, for a total of 1,474,560 bytes per disk. (Some disk controllers can vary these parameters at the user's request, increasing the amount of storage on the disk, although these formats may not be able to be read on machines with other controllers; e.g. [[Microsoft]] applications were often distributed on 'Microsoft distribution format' disks, a hack that allowed 1.68 MB to be stored on a 3½-inch floppy by formatting it with 21 sectors instead of 18, while these disks were still properly recognized by a standard controller.) On the [[IBM PC]] and also on the [[MSX]], [[Atari ST]], [[Amstrad CPC]], and most other microcomputer platforms, disks are written using a [[Constant Angular Velocity|Constant Angular Velocity (CAV)]] – Constant Sector Capacity format. This means that the disk spins at a constant speed, and the sectors on the disk all hold the same amount of information on each track regardless of radial location.
However, this is not the most efficient way to use the disk surface, even with available drive electronics. Because the sectors have a constant angular size, the 512 bytes in each sector are packed into a smaller length near the disk's center than nearer the disk's edge. A better technique would be to increase the number of sectors/track toward the outer edge of the disk, from 18 to 30 for instance, thereby keeping constant the amount of physical disk space used for storing each 512 byte sector (see ''[[zone bit recording]]''). Apple implemented this solution in the early Macintosh computers by spinning the disk slower when the head was at the edge while keeping the data rate the same, allowing them to store 400 KB per side, amounting to an extra 80 KB on a double-sided disk. This higher capacity came with a serious disadvantage, though; the format required a special drive mechanism and control circuitry not used by other manufacturers, meaning that Mac disks could not be read on any other computers. Apple eventually gave up on the format and used standard HD floppy drives on their later machines.
=== The Commodore 64/128 ===
Commodore started its tradition of special disk formats with the 5¼-inch disk drives accompanying its [[Commodore PET|PET/CBM]], [[Commodore VIC-20|VIC-20]] and [[Commodore 64]] home computers, like the [[Commodore 1540|1540]] and (better-known) [[Commodore 1541|1541]] drives used with the latter two machines. The standard Commodore [[Group Code Recording]] scheme used in 1541 and compatibles employed four different data rates depending upon track position (see ''[[zone bit recording]]''). Tracks 1 to 17 had 21 sectors, 18 to 24 had 19, 25 to 30 had 18, and 31 to 35 had 17, for a disk capacity of 170 KB.
Eventually Commodore gave in to disk format standardization, and made its last 5¼-inch drives, the [[Commodore 1570|1570]] and [[Commodore 1571|1571]], compatible with [[Modified Frequency Modulation|Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM)]], to enable the [[Commodore 128]] to work with [[CP/M]] disks from several vendors. Equipped with one of these drives, the C128 was able to access both C64 and CP/M disks, as it needed to, as well as MS-DOS disks (using third-party software), which was a crucial feature for some office work.
Commodore also offered its 8-bit machines a 3½-inch 800 KB disk format with its [[Commodore 1581|1581]] disk drive.
=== The Commodore Amiga ===
The [[Commodore International|Commodore]] [[Commodore Amiga|Amiga]] computers used an 880 KB format (eleven 512-byte sectors per track) on a 3½-inch floppy. Because the entire track was written at once, inter-sector gaps could be eliminated, saving space. The flexible floppy controller did not impose arbitrary format restrictions, and foreign formats such as the IBM PC could also be handled.
Commodore never upgraded the [[Original Amiga chipset|Amiga chip set]] to support high-density floppies, but sold a custom drive (made by Chinon) that spun at half speed (150RPM) when a high-density floppy was inserted, enabling the existing floppy controller to be used.
=== The Acorn Archimedes ===
Another machine using a similar "advanced" disk format was the British [[Acorn Archimedes]], which could store 1.6 MB on a 3½-inch HD floppy. It could also read and write disk formats from other machines, for example the Atari ST and the IBM PC. The Amiga's disks could not be read as they used a non-standard sector size and unusual sector gap markers.
=== Cakera liut 12-inci ===
Pada akhir 1970an sesetengah (''mainframe'') IBM turut menggunakan cakera liut 12-inci (30 cm), tetapi kini hanya sedikit maklumat yang ada mengenai format dalaman atau keupayaannya.
=== Cakera liut 4-inci ===
Pada pertengahan tahun 80-an IBM telah memajukan cakera liut 4-inci. Program ini dirangsang oleh matlamat penjimatan kos secara agresif, tetapi tidak menarik minat industri. Pengguna sasaran, kedua-dua dalam dan luar IBM, lebih gemar piawaian yang ketika diperkenalkan merupakan pengurangan kos yang kecil, dan enggan mengubah semula pembukusan, cip antaramuka dan applikasi untuk reka bentuk persendirian (''proprietary''). Produk tersebut tidak pernah muncul, dan IBM (''wrote off'') beratus juta dolar kos pembangunan dan kemudahan pengilangan.
=== Pengisi automatik ===
Di majukan oleh IBM, dan ditiru oleh beberapa syarikat lain, mekanisma pengisian automatik (''autoloader'') yang mampu mengisi timbunan cakera liut satu-demi satu kedalam unit pemacu. Sistem ini amat besar, dan berhadapan dengan media tergantung (''hangups'') dan rosak (''chew-ups'') lebih kerap dari yang disukai ramai, tetapi ia merupakan separuh penyelesaian bagi keperluan penyalinan dan storan mudah-alih yang besar. Cakera 5.25 dan 3.5-inci yang lebih kecil memudahkan lagi teknologi ini disempurnakan.
=== Floppy mass storage ===
A number of companies, including IBM and Burroughs, experimented with using large numbers of unenclosed disks to create massive amounts of storage. The Burroughs system used a stack of 256 12-inch disks, spinning at high speed. The disk to be accessed was selected by using air jets to part the stack, and then a pair of heads flew over the surface as in any standard hard disk drive. This approach in some ways prefaced the Bernoulli disk from Iomega, but head crashes or air failures were spectacularly messy. Unfortunately, the program did not reach production.
=== 2-inch floppy disks ===
A small floppy disk was also used in the late 1980s to store video information for still video cameras such as the [[Sony]] Mavica (not to be confused with current Digital [[Mavica]] models) and the [[Canon (company)]] Ion.
This was not a digital data format; each track on the disk stored one video field from the [[interlace]]d [[composite video]] format. This yielded a capacity of 25 images per disk in frame mode and 50 in field mode.
The same media was used digitally formatted - 720K double-sided, double-density - in the [[Zenith Minisport]] laptop computer circa 1989. Although the media exhibited nearly identical performance to the 3.5" disks of the time, it was not successful.
=== Ultimate capacity, speed ===
It is not easy to provide an answer for data capacity, as there are many factors involved, starting with the particular disk format used. The differences between formats and encoding methods can result in data capacities ranging from 720KB or less up to 1.72 [[megabyte]]s (MB) or even more on a standard 3½-inch high-density floppy, just from using special floppy disk software, such as the [[fdformat]] utility which enables "standard" 3½-inch HD floppy drives to format HD disks at 1.62, 1.68 or 1.72 MB, though reading them back on another machine is another story. These techniques require much tighter matching of drive head geometry between drives; this is not always possible and can't be relied upon. The LS-240 drive supports a (rarely used) 32MB capacity on standard 3½" HD floppies—it is however, a write once technique, and cannot be used in a read/write/read mode. All the data must be read off, changed as needed, and rewritten to the disk. And it requires an LS-240 drive to read.
Sometimes however, manufacturers provide an "unformatted capacity" figure, which is roughly 2.0 MB for a standard 3½-inch HD floppy, and should imply that data density can't (or shouldn't) exceed a certain amount. There are however some special hardware/software tools, such as the [[CatWeasel]] [[floppy disk controller]] and software, which claim up to 2.23 MB of ''formatted'' capacity on a HD floppy. Such formats are not standard, hard to read in other drives and possibly even later with the same drive, and are probably not very reliable. It's probably true that floppy disks can surely hold an extra 10–20% formatted capacity versus their "nominal" values, but at the expense of reliability or hardware complexity.
3½-inch HD floppy drives typically have a transfer rate of 500 kilo[[baud]]. While this rate cannot be easily changed, overall performance can be improved by optimizing drive access times, shortening some [[BIOS]] introduced delays (especially on the [[IBM PC]] and [[IBM PC compatible|compatible]] platforms), and by changing the '''sector:shift''' parameter of a disk, which is, roughly, the numbers of sectors that are skipped by the drive's head when moving to the next track.
This happens because sectors aren't typically written exactly in a sequential manner but are scattered around the disk, which introduces yet another delay. Older machines and controllers may take advantage of these delays to cope with the data flow from the disk without having to actually stop it.
By changing this parameter, the actual sector sequence may become more adequate for the machine's speed. For example, an IBM format 1440 KB disk formatted with a sector:shift ratio of 3:2 has a sequential reading time (for reading ALL of the disk in one go) of just 1 minute, versus 1 minute and 20 seconds or more of a "normally" formatted disk. It's interesting to note that the "specially" formatted disk is very—if not completely—compatible with all standard controllers and BIOS, and generally requires no extra software drivers, as the BIOS generally "adapts" well to this slightly modified format.
== Usability ==
One of the chief [[usability]] problems of the floppy disk is its vulnerability. Even inside a closed plastic housing, the disk medium is still highly sensitive to dust, condensation, and temperature extremes. As with any magnetic storage, it is also vulnerable to magnetic fields. Blank floppies have usually been distributed with an extensive set of warnings, cautioning the user not to expose it to conditions which can endanger it.
Users damaging floppy disks (or their contents) were once a staple of "stupid user" folklore among computer technicians. These stories poked fun at users who stapled floppies to papers, made [[facsimile machine|faxes]] or [[photocopier|photocopies]] of them when asked to "copy a disk", or stored floppies by holding them with a magnet to a file cabinet. The flexible 5¼-inch disk could also (folklorically) be abused by rolling it into a [[typewriter]] to type a label, or by removing the disk medium from the plastic enclosure to store it safely.
On the other hand, the 3½-inch floppy has also been lauded for its mechanical usability by HCI expert [[Donald Norman]] (here quoted from his book ''[[The Design of Everyday Things]]'', Chapter 1):
:A simple example of a good design is the 3½-inch magnetic diskette for computers, a small circle of "floppy" magnetic material encased in hard plastic. Earlier types of floppy disks did not have this plastic case, which protects the magnetic material from abuse and damage. A sliding metal cover protects the delicate magnetic surface when the diskette is not in use and automatically opens when the diskette is inserted into the computer. The diskette has a square shape: there are apparently eight possible ways to insert it into the machine, only one of which is correct. What happens if I do it wrong? I try inserting the disk sideways. Ah, the designer thought of that. A little study shows that the case really isn't square: it's rectangular, so you can't insert a longer side. I try backward. The diskette goes in only part of the way. Small protrusions, indentations, and cutouts, prevent the diskette from being inserted backward or upside down: of the eight ways one might try to insert the diskette, only one is correct, and only that one will fit. An excellent design.
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==The '''floppy''' as a metaphor==
For more than two decades now, the floppy disk has been the primary ''external'' writable storage device used. Also, in a non-network environment, floppies have been the primary means of transferring data between computers (sometimes jokingly referred to as ''Sneakernet'' or ''Frisbeenet''). Floppy disks are also, unlike hard disks, handled and seen; even a novice user can identify a floppy disk (although this may change as they become less common). Because of all these factors, the image of the floppy disk has become a metaphor for saving data, and the floppy disk symbol is often seen in programs on buttons and other user interface elements related to saving files.
==Floppy disk/drive trivia==
* On the disk drives of the [[Atari ST]], [[Commodore computer]]s, and possibly others as well, the drive activity indicator [[light-emitting diode|LED]]s are software controllable. This was put to use in some games, for example in the ST version of ''[[Lemmings]]'', where the LED would blink as the three last building bricks were used by the bridge builder lemming. In the absence of audio cues (e.g., when not listening to the in-game sound), this was critical to prevent the builder lemming from falling down after completing a bridge.
* It was possible with the [[Commodore 1541]] and [[Commodore 1571|1571]] disk drives to vibrate the head carriage against a "Track-0" head stop at varying frequencies to create simple musical melodies (e.g., ''[[Amazing Grace]]'').
* There is an [[urban myth]] that it is safe to view a [[solar eclipse]] through the film of a floppy removed from its case. Despite some anecdotal support, this is in fact dangerous and can lead to retina damage and even blindness ([http://www.mreclipse.com/Special/filters.html], [http://www.flycapers.com/tours/voyages/eyesafety.html]). Moreover, it produces poor image quality compared to filters designed for this purpose.
* Strangely, Microsoft's [[Windows XP]] can read but cannot format standard 3.5" DD (720K) disks in standard HD (1.44MB) drives, neither by the Explorer's "format" command, nor by the command-line "format" command, which has been severely limited in functionality (number of parameters etc.) compared to [[Windows 95]], [[Windows 98]] and even [[Windows NT]]. It's unclear whether this is a [[bug]] or an intended behaviour. Only by the use of third-party disk tools is it possible to format 720K disks under [[Windows XP]]. Tip: some sources [http://www.carolrpt.com/disks.htm#Formatting%20Floppy%20Disks] suggest using the command: '''format a: /t:80 /n:9''' to format DD disks, as using the older DOS syntax '''format a:/f:720''' just won't work under Windows XP.
* The holes on the right side of a 3.5" disk can be altered as to 'fool' some [[disk drives]] or [[operating system|operating systems]] into treating the disk as a higher or lower density one, for backwards compatibility or economical reasons. Popular modifications include:
** Drilling or cutting an extra hole into the right-lower side of a DD 3.5" DD disk (symmetrical to the write-protect hole) in order to format the DD disk into a HD one. This was a popular practice during the early 90's, as most people switched to HD from DD during those days and some of them "converted" some or all of their DD disks into HD ones, for gaining an extra "free" 720K or disk space. The success ratio was very high, especially as late DD disks used the same materials as HD ones, so they had no problem supporting the higher density. In general, only very old (made before [[1989]]) DD disks were likely to exhibit faults and read/write errors.
** Viceversa, taping the right hole on a HD 3.5" disk enables it to be 'downgraded' to DD format. This may sound counterproductive at first, but there are practical scenarios e.g. compatibility issues with older computers, drives or devices that use DD floppies, like some electronic [[music keyboards]] and [[samplers]] [http://www.carolrpt.com/disks.htm] where a 'downgraded' disk can be useful, as factory-made DD disks have become hard to find after the mid-90's.
***Note: By default, many older HD drives will recognize ED disks as DD ones, since they lack the HD-specific holes and the drives lack the sensors to detect the ED-specific hole. Most DD drives will also handle ED disks as DD ones.
** Similarly, drilling an HD-like hole (under the ED one) into an ED (2.88MB) disk for 'downgrading' it to HD (1.44MB) format. This can turn useful if there are a lot of unusable ED disks due to the lack of a specific ED drive, which can now be used as normal HD disks. In general, they work pretty well.
** Finally, it is possible to "upgrade" a HD disk into an ED one by drilling an ED-positioned hole above the HD one, although the considerations made for DD vs HD disk material probably aren't valid for HD vs ED, and such "upgraded" disks probably aren't reliable.
** Double disk 'upgrades' or 'downgrades' are possible by drilling ED holes into DD disks or taping ED disks.
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== Lihat juga ==
* [[RaWrite2]] (a floppy disk image file writer/creator)
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