PHOTOS:  floppy and HD with cables

VIDEOS:  floppy and hard drive cables (floppy cable is on the left - NOTE that it contains a split near the end of the cable), HD + floppy with cables

A standard "high density" 3.5" floppy disk holds 1.44 Megs of information - about 1.5 million characters (not much compared to any hard drive).  Older 720k 3.5" floppy drives look the same as high density drives, but hold half the amount of information.  Those types of drives are no longer installed in new machines.  5.25" flexible floppy disks held 160k, 360k, or 1.2Megs of information - those types of drives are also now obsolete.  The only type of floppy drive still currently in common use is the 3.5” 1.44 meg drive.

VIDEO:  3.5” and 5.25” floppies

Physical installation of the drive includes mounting in a drive bay, connecting to the motherboard via ribbon cable, and connecting to the power supply.  The floppy power supply cable is the smallest of all the cables coming from the power supply.  There are no jumpers to set on a floppy drive, and most motherboards only contain a single floppy drive connector.

PHOTOS:  floppy and hard drive power cables (Floppy connector is on the bottom)

VIDEOS:  floppy mount AT, floppy mount ATX, floppy power connect AT, floppy power cable install, floppy power close up, floppy cable AT, floppy cable and power connect ATX

Although the floppy format is archaic, and the amount of data it holds is tiny, most modern computers still have at least a single 3.5" 1.44 meg floppy drive to read and write floppy disks. The original IBM and many 286 machines shipped with only a 5.25" floppy drive (no hard drive), because programs at that time fit on the small capacity of a single floppy disk.  Hard drives were added later to accommodate larger programs and data systems.  Until the late 1990's, most programs were shipped from the maker and copied onto your computer's hard disk ("installed" on your computer) via floppy diskettes.

CD ROMS, DVD’s, and other storage mediums:   In recent years the CD-ROM has become the standard for distributing software and information, primarily because its capacity is far greater than that of the floppy disk.  Unlike floppy disk drives, standard CD-ROM drives and disks are "read only" - you can read information from them, but not save to them.  That is perhaps the only reason that floppy drives have survived so long - office workers, students, and others who work at multiple PC's need a way to easily transport documents between machines.   CD-RW drives have become very popular in the past few years as a replacement for floppy media.  These drives write to special CD-R disks (writeable once) and CD-RW media (rewritable many times).  CD-ROM disks can hold between 650 and 700 Megs of information - over 450X that of a floppy - and can used to copy music and program CDs.  CD-R disks are inexpensive and available at just about any office or technology store - as low as $.25 per CD. 

CD-ROM speeds are measured in "X" values.  To read multimedia (graphics and sound capable) CD's, you need at least a 2x CD-ROM drive.  The current fast value on the market is 58x, although a 24x CD is fast enough for virtually any application.  DVD drives are essentially CD-ROM drives which have the additional capability of reading DVD video disks.  They are rated with a DVD read speed, and a CD read speed.  A fast DVD at the time of this writing is one with a 12X DVD read speed, and a 40X CD read speed.

PHOTOS:  CD ROM 16 X

VIDEOS:  cd rom mount top, CD ROM mount top a little closer, CD ROM mount side, CD ROM sound cable, CD ROM sound cable into MB (AT), CD ROM sound cable into MB (white connector), CD-ROM power supply, IDE double to CD ROM and HD + power connectors, CD ROM + HD on dual IDE cables, CD ROM + HD on dual IDE in standard Tower, CD ROM + HD power cables, with closeup

Other types of drives include Zip drives, tape drives, and other magneto-optical drives that read and write 100Megs-100Gigs of information (comparable to HD sizes) on disks that are roughly the same dimensions as a floppy.  Tape drives are usually used in business network environments to reliably back up and archive large amounts of shared data.  100M zip drives were cost effective at one point (at approximately $10 per 100Meg disk), but CD-R media is much less expensive ($.25 per 650Meg disk), more reliable, and has made most of the older magnetic media obsolete.  Some users still prefer to build or buy machines with a ZIP drive in order to transfer data and documents between older machines already fitted with the once popular ZIP disks.