MS Technology Vocabulary floppy disk

Gracie Gallay January 2009 Computer 7-6

                                       Floppy Disk

–NOUN A thin, flexible plastic disk coated with magnetic material, on which data and programs can be stored for later retrieval: used mainly with microcomputers.It is a magnetic storage device.

It is called a floppy disk because it flops if you wave it . Unlike most hard disks, floppy disks are portable because you can remove them from a disk drive.

Disk Drives for floppy disks are called floppy drives. Floppy disks are slower to access than hard disks and have less storage capacity, but they are much less expensive.

Floppies come in three basic sizes: 8-inch- The typical desktop/laptop computer does not use the 8-inch floppy disk. 5¼-inch - This type of floppy is generally capable of storing between 100K and 1.2MB 3½-inch- Despite their small size, micro floppies have a larger storage capacity than their cousins -from 400K to 1.4MB of data. They have been outdated by USB flash drives.