2.3 Hardware Components
2.3.10 Floppy drives
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.

Interactive PhotoZoom Activity  (Flash, 447 KB)
  Floppy Drive 
Worksheet  (PDF, 7 KB)
  Floppy Drive