3.5 inch floppy disk - Revision history

Malvineous: Category, copyediting

2016-04-17T06:33:01Z

Category, copyediting

Malvineous: Malvineous moved page 3.5 inch floppy to 3.5 inch floppy disk: Match media names on drive infobox

2016-03-26T00:26:20Z

Malvineous moved page 3.5 inch floppy to 3.5 inch floppy disk: Match media names on drive infobox

Enigma at 08:28, 20 July 2014

2014-07-20T08:28:39Z

Anonymous Coward at 10:59, 25 May 2014

2014-05-25T10:59:21Z

Anonymous Coward at 14:16, 24 May 2014

2014-05-24T14:16:05Z

Tetrium at 20:24, 26 January 2014

2014-01-26T20:24:50Z

Tetrium at 18:48, 25 January 2014

2014-01-25T18:48:02Z

Tetrium: Created page with "This format was designed to be smaller then the 5.25in floppydrive and it's media and fixed some of the 5.25in floppies design problems. The disks are housed in a stiff housin..."

2014-01-25T15:57:16Z

Created page with "This format was designed to be smaller then the 5.25in floppydrive and it's media and fixed some of the 5.25in floppies design problems. The disks are housed in a stiff housin..."

New page

This format was designed to be smaller then the 5.25in floppydrive and it's media and fixed some of the 5.25in floppies design problems.
The disks are housed in a stiff housing, opposed to the "floppy" housing the 5.25in floppy was made in.

3.5in floppies came in 3 different densities (easily distinguished by a second hole on the side) and while only the earliest 3.5in disks were single sided, almost all 3.5in floppies can be written to on both sides.
The 3 densities are:
*Double density (a.k.a. DD)
*High density (a.k.a. HD)
*Extra high density (a.k.a. ED)

Like earlier floppies, there were many different ways to format a disk, often depending on what type of computer the disk was formatted with.
On PC's, DD disks were usually (DOS-)formatted to 720KB (though in practice it had about 714KB of usable space), HD disks formatted to 1.44MB (in practice it was around 1.38MB) and the uncommon 2.88MB disks formatted to around 2.76MB. On older Macs the DD disks formatted to around 820KB.

In addition to the standard DOS formatting utility, there are several other 3rd party formatting utilities around (Winimage is one of them) which can overformat disks to hold more space (even Microsoft used it's DMF format to distribute media, which could hold upto around 1.68MB instead of the usual 1.38MB).
Most overformatting utilities won't overformat ED disks though but as these disks and it's drives are very hard to come by, this is hardly significant.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-This format was designed to be smaller then the [[5.25 inch floppy|5.25in floppydrive and it's media]] and fixed some of the 5.25in floppies design problems.
+This format was designed to be smaller than the [[5.25 inch floppy|5.25" floppy drive and its media]] and fixed some of the 5.25" design problems.  The disks are housed in a stiff casing, opposed to the "floppy" plastic the 5.25" disk was housed in. Despite the more rugged design, 3.5 inch floppy drives tend to to be less reliable due to their compact nature.
-The disks are housed in a stiff housing, opposed to the "floppy" housing the 5.25in floppy was made in. Despite the more rugged design, 3.5 inch floppy drives tend to to be less reliable due to their compact nature.
 The 3 densities are:
-Like earlier floppies, there were many different ways to format a disk, often depending on what type of computer the disk was formatted with. On PC's, DD disks were usually (DOS-)formatted to 720KB (though in practice it had about 714KB of usable space), HD disks formatted to 1.44MB (in practice it was around 1.38MB) and the uncommon 2.88MB disks (primarily used in IBM PS/2s) formatted to around 2.76MB. On older Macs the DD disks formatted to around 820KB, and on Amiga 880kb.
+* Double density (DD, 720 kB)
 Most over-formatting utilities don't handle ED disks, as the format never gained much popularity.
 [[File:DD HD ED.JPG|200px|thumb||Unformatted capacity of DD, HD and ED disks]]
-The overall transfer speed when reading from a 1.44 Mb disk is about 30 kB/s. This could be tuned by formatting disks with an optimal track interleave that reduces access times after a track change on sequential reads significantly. Tools like vgacopy offered this feature.
+The overall transfer speed when reading from a 1.44 MB disk is about 30 kB/s. This could be tuned by formatting disks with an optimal track interleave that reduces access times after a track change on sequential reads significantly. Tools like vgacopy offered this feature.

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 Like earlier floppies, there were many different ways to format a disk, often depending on what type of computer the disk was formatted with. On PC's, DD disks were usually (DOS-)formatted to 720KB (though in practice it had about 714KB of usable space), HD disks formatted to 1.44MB (in practice it was around 1.38MB) and the uncommon 2.88MB disks (primarily used in IBM PS/2s) formatted to around 2.76MB. On older Macs the DD disks formatted to around 820KB, and on Amiga 880kb.
-In addition to the standard DOS formatting utility, there are several other 3rd party formatting utilities around (Winimage is one of them) which can overformat disks to hold more space (even Microsoft used it's DMF format to distribute media, which could hold up to 1.68MB instead of the usual 1.38MB).
+In the 1990ies the demand for higher capacities increased. Software utilities appeared that allowed to format disks to higher capacities like 1.72 Mb. By loading a small TSR-driver such formatted disks could be used like the normal 1.44 Mb formatted disks in DOS. Well known tools are fdformat (fdread), vgacopy (vgaread). Even Microsofts made use of this by introducing the DMF format (1.68 Mb) for distributing software on disks. Current archiving tools like Winimage also support disks with increased capacity.
 Most over-formatting utilities don't handle ED disks, as the format never gained much popularity.
 [[File:DD HD ED.JPG|200px|thumb||Unformatted capacity of DD, HD and ED disks]]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 This format was designed to be smaller then the [[5.25 inch floppy|5.25in floppydrive and it's media]] and fixed some of the 5.25in floppies design problems.
-The disks are housed in a stiff housing, opposed to the "floppy" housing the 5.25in floppy was made in.
+The disks are housed in a stiff housing, opposed to the "floppy" housing the 5.25in floppy was made in. Despite the more rugged design, 3.5 inch floppy drives tend to to be less reliable due to their compact nature.
 .5 inch floppies came in three different densities (easily distinguished by a second hole on the side) and while only the earliest 3.5in disks were single sided, almost all 3.5 inch floppies can be written to on both sides.

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:24, 26 January 2014
Line 13:		Line 13:
	In addition to the standard DOS formatting utility, there are several other 3rd party formatting utilities around (Winimage is one of them) which can overformat disks to hold more space (even Microsoft used it's DMF format to distribute media, which could hold upto around 1.68MB instead of the usual 1.38MB).		In addition to the standard DOS formatting utility, there are several other 3rd party formatting utilities around (Winimage is one of them) which can overformat disks to hold more space (even Microsoft used it's DMF format to distribute media, which could hold upto around 1.68MB instead of the usual 1.38MB).
	Most overformatting utilities won't overformat ED disks though but as these disks and it's drives are very hard to come by, this is hardly significant.		Most overformatting utilities won't overformat ED disks though but as these disks and it's drives are very hard to come by, this is hardly significant.
		+	[[File:DD HD ED.JPG\|200px\|thumb\|\|Unformatted capacity of DD, HD and ED disks]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:48, 25 January 2014
Line 1:		Line 1:
−	This format was designed to be smaller then the 5.25in floppydrive and it's media and fixed some of the 5.25in floppies design problems.	+	This format was designed to be smaller then the [[5.25 inch floppy\|5.25in floppydrive and it's media]] and fixed some of the 5.25in floppies design problems.
	The disks are housed in a stiff housing, opposed to the "floppy" housing the 5.25in floppy was made in.		The disks are housed in a stiff housing, opposed to the "floppy" housing the 5.25in floppy was made in.

← Older revision	Revision as of 00:26, 26 March 2016
(No difference)

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 The disks are housed in a stiff housing, opposed to the "floppy" housing the 5.25in floppy was made in.
-.5in floppies came in 3 different densities (easily distinguished by a second hole on the side) and while only the earliest 3.5in disks were single sided, almost all 3.5in floppies can be written to on both sides.
+.5 inch floppies came in three different densities (easily distinguished by a second hole on the side) and while only the earliest 3.5in disks were single sided, almost all 3.5 inch floppies can be written to on both sides.
 The 3 densities are:
-*Double density (a.k.a. DD)
+*Double density (a.k.a. DD, 720kb)
-*High density (a.k.a. HD)
+*High density (a.k.a. HD, 1.44mb)
-*Extra high density (a.k.a. ED)
+*Extra high density (a.k.a. ED, 2.88mb)
-Like earlier floppies, there were many different ways to format a disk, often depending on what type of computer the disk was formatted with.
+Like earlier floppies, there were many different ways to format a disk, often depending on what type of computer the disk was formatted with. On PC's, DD disks were usually (DOS-)formatted to 720KB (though in practice it had about 714KB of usable space), HD disks formatted to 1.44MB (in practice it was around 1.38MB) and the uncommon 2.88MB disks (primarily used in IBM PS/2s) formatted to around 2.76MB. On older Macs the DD disks formatted to around 820KB, and on Amiga 880kb.
-In addition to the standard DOS formatting utility, there are several other 3rd party formatting utilities around (Winimage is one of them) which can overformat disks to hold more space (even Microsoft used it's DMF format to distribute media, which could hold upto around 1.68MB instead of the usual 1.38MB).
+In addition to the standard DOS formatting utility, there are several other 3rd party formatting utilities around (Winimage is one of them) which can overformat disks to hold more space (even Microsoft used it's DMF format to distribute media, which could hold up to 1.68MB instead of the usual 1.38MB).
-Most overformatting utilities won't overformat ED disks though but as these disks and it's drives are very hard to come by, this is hardly significant.
+Most over-formatting utilities don't handle ED disks, as the format never gained much popularity.
 [[File:DD HD ED.JPG|200px|thumb||Unformatted capacity of DD, HD and ED disks]]