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A Floppy Disk Drive (FDD) magnetically
reads and writes information onto floppy diskettes, which are a form
of removable storage media. Introduced in 1987, the 3.5"
diskettes used today have a hard plastic exterior shell that protects
the thin, flexible disk inside.
An FDD is mounted inside the system unit and only removed for
repairs or upgrades. The floppy diskette, on the contrary, can be
taken at the end of a computer working session. The main drawback to
the floppy diskette is that it only holds 1.44 MB of information,
although most PCs still have a floppy drive. Although 1.44 MB is
plenty of space for most text documents such as MS Word and Excel
files, for a file containing rich graphical content the floppy disk
capacity may be insufficient. The main parts of a typical floppy
diskette include the floppy protective case, the thin magnetic
flexible disk, a sliding door, and sliding door spring.
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