S
Steve Hayes
Are data stored magnetically on flash drives?
G
Gene E. Bloch
NO! Let ME have some fun!Aw, c'mon, Gene. Let him have some fun
Bah and humbug, I say...
S
Steve Hayes
The 8" ones were called floppy disks, the 5.25" ones were mini-floppy disks,
and the 3,5" ones were called micro-floppy disks, though we called them
stiffies, or stiffy disks.
G
Gene E. Bloch
*Even* a hard drive?
Hard drives are *magnetic* storage devices.
G
Gene E. Bloch
OMG! The price of the Trash-80!
I had not remembered that...
G
Gene E. Bloch
G
Gene E. Bloch
I always called them floppies (never heard of stiffies), but I do
remember a secretary who kept calling them hard disks. I finally took
one apart and showed her why they're called floppies
C
Char Jackson
As an aside, the most powerful magnets that I've personally seen can
be found inside hard drives. I accidentally let two of them get too
close together and had to separate them with two pairs of pliers.
R
R. C. White
Hi, Char.
Those 5.25" floppies were "mini-floppies" to distinguish them from the 8"
floppies. I don't recall that the 3 1/2" floppies had a distinctive name.
Internally they all used the same thin film disks cut like doughnuts from
(floppy!) Mylar plastic sheets.
My first computer was the original TRS-80 (before they called it the Model
I) in December 1977. Soon after that, the Model II appeared, but I never
had one of those; it was a big "business" machine with two 8" floppy disk
drives built in. But my computer had no disk drives at all until the next
Summer. We had to load all our programs and data from a music cassette
recorder. Tapes were sequential and SLOW; it took about 5 minutes to load
the 12 KB (yes, K!) tax estimating program that I wrote in Level I (tiny 4
KB) BASIC in January 1978, then re-wrote in Level II BASIC when it arrived
(in a new EEPROM that the Radio Shack store installed for me) in February
1978.
In July 1978, mini-floppy disk drives were introduced, along with TRSDOS.
Our first diskettes held only 87.5 KB (35 tracks of ten 256-byte sectors),
including the space used by the directory and other overhead. And since
TRSDOS and Disk BASIC also had to be loaded from the floppy, we could use
only about 50 KB per diskette to store apps and data. When we got a second
FDD, our horizon more than doubled; we could keep the OS and app in one and
store data on the other. And when we finally got a third one, we were
thrilled: we could now copy files between the second and third drives,
while keeping the OS/apps in the first drive. No more copying stuff from
diskette to memory, then swapping out the source diskette and putting in the
destination and copying from memory to the destination. It was wonderful!
When I shopped for diskettes for the first time in 1978, the computer store
owner asked if I wanted soft-sector or hard-sector diskettes. I didn't
know. I learned later that hard-sector diskettes had 10 holes punched
around the center; a light inside the drive would shine through the holes,
and sensors on the other side of the diskette could tell which sector was
then being read by the read/write head. The TRS-80 used soft-sector
diskettes, with only a single sensing hole; TRSDOS could use timing of the
spin speed to determine positions of the 10 sectors. These diskettes were
all single-sided, of course; double-sided diskettes arrived a year or two
later. As technology improved, we eventually got 5.25" diskettes that could
hold over 1 MB each. A few manufacturers figured out how to double that.
My final TRS-80 Model 4 in the early 1980's had 4 floppy drives, 2 built in
and 2 more connected via external cable, and I had a full MEGABYTE online!
WOW! The new 3.5" diskettes arrived in the early '80s with capacities
starting about where the 5.25s topped out. And then we got hard disk drives
that started at about 5 MB - for thousands of dollars each. Quicken reminds
me that I bought a 40 MB Seagate on 2/26/87 for $557 after prices had come
down some; my previous HDs had been pre-installed in computers I bought.
The thin Mylar film in 5.25" diskettes were encased in stiff black paper,
just like the larger 8" floppies. (I still have the one that I cut open to
inspect.) This made the diskettes easier to handle and harder to damage,
but they still were somewhat floppy. Each one had a squarish notch cut in
one corner; a sensor inside the drive could detect this and tell if we had
inserted the diskette upside down. That was critical for single-sided
diskettes, of course, and it also was important for double-sided diskettes.
At first, our drives had only a single read/write head; we had to turn it
over to record on or read from the other side. We learned how to physically
punch holes and the squarish notch in the right positions so that we could
use the second side. Later drives had dual sets of heads and could
read/write on both sides without turning the diskettes over.
I still have stacks of 5.25" and 3.5" diskettes - which I can no longer
read. The motherboard I bought early this year doesn't even have an FDD
connector, so I can't hook up my combination floppy disk drive, which has
slots - and heads - for both sizes of diskettes; I bought it for $37.89 in
1996.
Ah! Memories. Good times - and bad. ;^}
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1
"Char Jackson" wrote in message
was later that the 5.25" floppies came along, followed of course by
the less floppy 3.5" type.
Those 5.25" floppies were "mini-floppies" to distinguish them from the 8"
floppies. I don't recall that the 3 1/2" floppies had a distinctive name.
Internally they all used the same thin film disks cut like doughnuts from
(floppy!) Mylar plastic sheets.
My first computer was the original TRS-80 (before they called it the Model
I) in December 1977. Soon after that, the Model II appeared, but I never
had one of those; it was a big "business" machine with two 8" floppy disk
drives built in. But my computer had no disk drives at all until the next
Summer. We had to load all our programs and data from a music cassette
recorder. Tapes were sequential and SLOW; it took about 5 minutes to load
the 12 KB (yes, K!) tax estimating program that I wrote in Level I (tiny 4
KB) BASIC in January 1978, then re-wrote in Level II BASIC when it arrived
(in a new EEPROM that the Radio Shack store installed for me) in February
1978.
In July 1978, mini-floppy disk drives were introduced, along with TRSDOS.
Our first diskettes held only 87.5 KB (35 tracks of ten 256-byte sectors),
including the space used by the directory and other overhead. And since
TRSDOS and Disk BASIC also had to be loaded from the floppy, we could use
only about 50 KB per diskette to store apps and data. When we got a second
FDD, our horizon more than doubled; we could keep the OS and app in one and
store data on the other. And when we finally got a third one, we were
thrilled: we could now copy files between the second and third drives,
while keeping the OS/apps in the first drive. No more copying stuff from
diskette to memory, then swapping out the source diskette and putting in the
destination and copying from memory to the destination. It was wonderful!
When I shopped for diskettes for the first time in 1978, the computer store
owner asked if I wanted soft-sector or hard-sector diskettes. I didn't
know. I learned later that hard-sector diskettes had 10 holes punched
around the center; a light inside the drive would shine through the holes,
and sensors on the other side of the diskette could tell which sector was
then being read by the read/write head. The TRS-80 used soft-sector
diskettes, with only a single sensing hole; TRSDOS could use timing of the
spin speed to determine positions of the 10 sectors. These diskettes were
all single-sided, of course; double-sided diskettes arrived a year or two
later. As technology improved, we eventually got 5.25" diskettes that could
hold over 1 MB each. A few manufacturers figured out how to double that.
My final TRS-80 Model 4 in the early 1980's had 4 floppy drives, 2 built in
and 2 more connected via external cable, and I had a full MEGABYTE online!
WOW! The new 3.5" diskettes arrived in the early '80s with capacities
starting about where the 5.25s topped out. And then we got hard disk drives
that started at about 5 MB - for thousands of dollars each. Quicken reminds
me that I bought a 40 MB Seagate on 2/26/87 for $557 after prices had come
down some; my previous HDs had been pre-installed in computers I bought.
The thin Mylar film in 5.25" diskettes were encased in stiff black paper,
just like the larger 8" floppies. (I still have the one that I cut open to
inspect.) This made the diskettes easier to handle and harder to damage,
but they still were somewhat floppy. Each one had a squarish notch cut in
one corner; a sensor inside the drive could detect this and tell if we had
inserted the diskette upside down. That was critical for single-sided
diskettes, of course, and it also was important for double-sided diskettes.
At first, our drives had only a single read/write head; we had to turn it
over to record on or read from the other side. We learned how to physically
punch holes and the squarish notch in the right positions so that we could
use the second side. Later drives had dual sets of heads and could
read/write on both sides without turning the diskettes over.
I still have stacks of 5.25" and 3.5" diskettes - which I can no longer
read. The motherboard I bought early this year doesn't even have an FDD
connector, so I can't hook up my combination floppy disk drive, which has
slots - and heads - for both sizes of diskettes; I bought it for $37.89 in
1996.
Ah! Memories. Good times - and bad. ;^}
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1
"Char Jackson" wrote in message
I thought the 'floppy' name was first given to the 8" diskettes. It
was later that the 5.25" floppies came along, followed of course by
the less floppy 3.5" type.
S
Steve Hayes
Back in the day (ie about 20 years ago) we used to ask for computers with "aI always called them floppies (never heard of stiffies), but I do
remember a secretary who kept calling them hard disks. I finally took
one apart and showed her why they're called floppies
floppy drive and a stiffy drive".
I
Iain
I did uninstall it many weeks ago.
Iain
I
Iain
I am aware of this. I only want to stop the disc activity associated
with it. When examined in Resource Monitor the file associated with ot
is Windows Live Mail e.g. C:/users/iain/AppData/Windows live
Mail/??????? (the ??? represents different filenames.) There were
literally hundreds of entries adding up to thousands of reads per second.
Anyway, I reinstalled Windows Live Essentials then uninstalled it again
which seems to have resolved the issue. But the uninstall was not
complete, I had to manually remove some Files, Put them in recycle bin
for the time being .. just in case.
Iain
C
choro
I get it now. So the 8" floppy, which must have been really floppy and
earned the floppy name on merit, was miniaturized to the 5.25" floppy
before the advent of the 3.5" not so floppy floppy!
Interesting. Thanks!
-- choro
C
choro
Oh yes, the 3.5" floppies *were* rather stiffy! Some cheaper brands less
so.
I remember once carefully opening up an old stiffy which had stopped
working and transferring the ferrite coated plastic disk into another
housing from a new stiffy!
The older stiffy had gone stiffy inside as well and was not rotating
properly due to friction.
Thus I had my files back safe and sound which I copied onto another
brand new floppy to make sure, just in case.
I remember the first ever computer I bought -- a Panasonic laptop with
no hard disk. Everything was on a floppy apart from some critical DOS
files which were on a non-erasable PROM chip.
I got so fed up swapping disks -- the program disk and the user disk for
saving user files -- that in the end I copied some of the basic Word
Perfect v.1 files onto another 720KB Double Density floppy, which left
me enough room on the floppy to save my word processing files onto the
same floppy.
What relief? End of eternal swapping of floppies!
-- choro
C
choro
She might have appreciated it more had you shown her your stiffy! ;-)I always called them floppies (never heard of stiffies), but I do
remember a secretary who kept calling them hard disks. I finally took
one apart and showed her why they're called floppies
-- choro
C
choro
I thought data in flash drives is stored in bricks and mortar or in
reinforced cement in some of the later models. More solid and safer than
sand castles! ;-)
-- choro
PS. Just an afterthought but which is correct? *Data is* or *Data are*?
Let's not forget that Data is the plural of Datum. So Data itself is a
plural word!!!!!
P
Paul
In a quick Google, I see "secsvcs" mentioned in the context of Windows Defender.
Would those instances be your AV solution, whatever it happens to be ?
Paul
T
Tim Slattery
Of course. A hard drive is magnetic storage.
Nope. Flash storage is not magnetic.
W
Wolf K
Lee Valley Tools offers some _really_ powerful disk magnets. Impossible
to lift off the fridge without tools. ;-)
HTH
Wolf K.