This 'disk' of plastic is contained within a protective envelope or hard plastic case, which is then inserted into the drive and automatically locked onto a spindle. This allowed the XT to have two floppy drives plus a full-height hard drive.Ī floppy disk is essentially a very flexible piece (hence the term floppy disk) of plastic coated on both sides in a magnetic material. ![]() In 1986 the IBM PC XT was made available which introduced the "half-height" drive which took up just one drive bay. In the earliest PCs these drives were "full-height", meaning they took up two drive bays - one on top of the other. The idea behind having more than one drive was so that you could have your 'Program' disk in one (like a Word Processor application), and your 'Working Files' disk in another (where you stored your saved documents). The first IBM PC was envisioned with a cassette tape, but typically it came with one or two 5¼" floppy disk drives. Before long, the hard-sectored format disappeared. The drives were manufactured by Shugart Associates initially, but by 1978 there were over 10 manufacturers producing 5¼" floppy drives in competing physical disk formats: hard-sectored (90 KB) and soft-sectored (110 KB). In 1976 the 5¼" floppy disk, the "minifloppy", was made available. ![]() IBM released the first floppy disk drive in 1972 - these used 8" floppy disks.
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