How Floppy Disks Work
Floppy disks, or diskettes, are made from a flexible plastic that
is coated with a magnetic oxide. The floppy disk drive encodes
this oxide with the data generated by the computer. After you
turn your system off, unlike electronic RAM, the encoded
oxide retains this data. Your data can then be read by the
floppy disk drive at a later time.
The magnetic oxide coating on the floppy disk will hold its
encoded data almost indefinitely unless you deliberately erase
it. This is done intentionally when you want to update the
information stored on the diskette.
The plastic disk is safely protected by a thin jacket.
The diskette spins inside this jacket, allowing the entire surface
of the diskette to be scanned by the drive’s circuitry. Data is
read from or written onto the diskette through the oval-shaped
slots in the jacket.
Normally, the computer will write new information onto the
unused space on the diskette. If there is no unused space, your
computer will inform you that the disk is full.
You can instruct the computer to write over the information
that is already on the diskette. You might do this to update an
inventory file, or change an address and phone number in a
database.
5-2
Using
Floppy Disks
Содержание CW3S20A Canadian Product
Страница 1: ...SX386E OPERATIONS GUIDE...
Страница 17: ...Appendix C Connector Pinouts I OPorts C l Expansion Slot Connectors C 5 Contents xvii...
Страница 145: ...Figure 7 6 Mounting the Internal Hard Disk Drive 7 16 Expanding Your System...
Страница 148: ...l Memory Bank Configurations l BIOS ROM 64K byte 150ns 2ea Specifications A 3...