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| Thread ID: 36297 | 2003-08-05 08:08:00 | Floppy drive size | miknz (3731) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 165595 | 2003-08-05 08:08:00 | Can someone tell me why a floppy disk is 1.44 meg, why not 1.5 or 2?? Maybe I'm just being silly but 1.44 seems like a strange size. Did the person who invented them just decide that 1.44 sounded like a good number? or is there another reason? I know that the physical size of the disk would come into it but couldnt they just make it half an inch larger to squeeze on another 600 odd k. Your thoughts would be appreciated Mike |
miknz (3731) | ||
| 165596 | 2003-08-05 08:27:00 | > Can someone tell me why a floppy disk is 1.44 meg, > why not 1.5 or 2?? Floppy disks are not really (before formatting 1.44 MB) They are really 1.38 MB (after formatting) |
stu140103 (137) | ||
| 165597 | 2003-08-05 08:35:00 | > > Can someone tell me why a floppy disk is 1.44 meg, > > why not 1.5 or 2?? > > Floppy disks are not really (before formatting 1.44 > MB) > They are really 1.38 MB (after formatting) IIRC floppies are actually 2MB before formatting and 1.4MB after - the 1.38MB would be due to the way Windows reads and reports disk sizes compared to how DOS used to do it. The loss of the 600k is due to the formatting setting up the disk to be read by DOS etc. There are ways (I've done it) of formatting a 1.4MB to something like 1.6 or 1.8 just by using a different method of formatting, but I'm fairly sure that these won't run in Windows, as you need the formatting program's TSR to be in the memory to be able to read the disk (this is because part of the info that DOS would write to the disk to enable it to be read would now be stored in the RAM instead). Mike. |
Mike (15) | ||
| 165598 | 2003-08-06 04:31:00 | And real floppies are 160 kB. Or 180 kB, or ... Real Real floppies are 8" in diameter. Then someone made wimpy little 5¼" ones. Then someone put them in hard shells. :D But if you want more capacity, use a LS120, which uses specaill floppies, with a preburned laser servo track. That gives you 120 MB. |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 165599 | 2003-08-06 04:52:00 | I found MaxFormat worth buying a few years ago. No use for those who've said they havent used a floppy in 3 years :), also maybe not so useful if you never use dos. www.alkonost.com |
Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 165600 | 2003-08-06 05:23:00 | The Linux mdos utilities allow various sizes when you use them to format floppies. Up to close to 2MB on a 2 MB disk, including MS's 1.7 (whichj they used for W95 distribution disks). | Graham L (2) | ||
| 165601 | 2003-08-06 08:41:00 | > I found MaxFormat worth buying a few years ago. No > use for those who've said they havent used a floppy > in 3 years :), also maybe not so useful if you never > use dos. > > www.alkonost.com That's what it was! Maxformat :) Although I don't remember having to buy it... I thought it was freeware? :( Mike. |
Mike (15) | ||
| 165602 | 2003-08-06 09:48:00 | To get back to the original question, I think the 1.44MB floppys came about due to a process of doubling up. The original was 360K then came the 720K-- guess what was next! | Rod ger (316) | ||
| 165603 | 2003-08-07 03:23:00 | IBM even released a 2.88 Mb Floppy Drive. see here (www.codemicro.com) |
KiwiTT (4082) | ||
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