Floppy Disk Drive
- The FDD installs in one of the
external drive bays at the front of the PC case and is secured by machine
screws. External means you can access the drive from the outside.
- It is powered by a cable with a 4-pin
connector that comes from the power supply.
- It transfers data to and from the motherboard
by means of a 34 pin ribbon cable.
- It stores data magnetically on a removable
floppy disk. A pickup arm in the drive floats above the disk surface. The
arm moves rapidly back and forth across the disk surface as a small
magnetic sensor at the end of the arm reads and writes data on the
rotating disk surface.
- Floppy disks hold 1.44 Mbytes, which at one
time was a large amount of data. Today many programs and files are much
larger than this. In spite of being surpassed in size by CD and DVD,
floppy drives are still found on many newer PCs.