CertiGuide to A+ (Core Hardware) - Floppy Disk Form Factors

There are two form factors used for floppy disks in a PC, 5.25" and 3.5". The sizes refer to the floppy disks themselves. The original floppy disk drive for PC’s used a full height (3.25" tall) 5.25" drive bay. The disks themselves had a total capacity of 360KB, known as a Double Density disks. Later, High Density disks were introduced at 1.2MB capacity.

In 1987, IBM introduced the first 3.5" floppy disk drive as part of its PS/2 line of personal computers. The smaller, more durable diskettes hold 1.44 MB of data and are now the de facto standard for floppy drives used in modern PC's. Shortly there after, Toshiba released a floppy disk that would hold 2.88 MB of data, but due to a lack of marketing and the high cost of the diskettes, this technology quickly faded away. Table 14 lists the most standard types of floppy disk and their capacities.

**Table 14: Floppy Disk Capacities**
Disk Size	Double Density Capacity	High Density Capacity
5¼”	360 KB	1.2 MB
3½”	720 KB	1.44 MB

III Floppy Drives

Attaching a Floppy Disk Drive To a PC

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Version 1.0 - Version Date: December 6, 2004

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