A floppy disk is a thin piece of magnetically coated mylar enclosed in a plastic jacket Modern floppies are 3 5 inches in size and hold 1 44 Mb of data Such a disk is capable of storing approximately 1 4 million characters, or about 3,000 pages of information This may sound like a lot, but it fills up surprisingly fast, especially if you have included graphics in your documents
A form of portable data storage - an electronic briefcase The standard floppy disk is now the hard cased 3 5" disk which is neither floppy nor disk-shaped (until you crack it open) Previously, there was the 5" floppy that was cased in paper Floppies most often fit into the A: or B: drive in the front of your computer (The C: drive is the internal hard disk and the D: drive is now commonly the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive) There are two drive letters allocated to the floppy because for a while computers had drives for both the 5" (A: ) and the 3 5" (B: ) disks before the latter became standard
a small plastic magnetic disk enclosed in a stiff envelope with a radial slit; used to store data or programs for a microcomputer; "floppy disks are noted for their relatively slow speed and small capacity and low price"
A magnetic disk which is used to store data and is often used to transfer files from one PC to another or to backup important files Once available in 5 25 and 8 inch formats, the outmoded floppy disk is now only commercially used in its hard cased 3 5-inch guise With a tiny capacity of only 1 4 megabytes, the floppy disk is set to become a medium of the past, having been vastly superseded by the Zip Disk, re-writable CD-RW's and eventually DVD-RW's
Storage medium for computer files consisting of a magnetic, flexible disk enclosed in a 3 1/2" square plastic case Floppy disks may be formatted for use on both Macintosh or PC platforms
A flexible, portable magnetic disk for storing and transferring data, available in a 3 5-inch size (for both Macintosh and IBM-compatible computers) and a 5 25-inch size (for IBM-compatibles only) The flexible 3 5 inch disk is housed in a rigid plastic case (See also disc )
flop·py disk floppy disks in BRIT, also use floppy disc A floppy disk is a small magnetic disk that is used for storing computer data and programs. Floppy disks are used especially with personal computers. A flexible plastic disk coated with magnetic material and covered by a protective jacket, used primarily by computers to store data magnetically. Also called diskette. or diskette Magnetic storage medium used with computers. Floppy disks are made of flexible plastic coated with a magnetic material, and are enclosed in a hard plastic case. They are typically 3.5 in. (9 cm) in diameter. Data are arranged on their surfaces in concentric tracks. A disk is inserted in the computer's floppy disk drive, an assembly of magnetic heads and a mechanical device for rotating the disk for reading or writing purposes. A small electromagnet, called a magnetic head, writes a binary digit (1 or 0) onto the disk by magnetizing a tiny spot on the disk in different directions, and reads digits by detecting the magnetization direction of the spots. With the increasing use of e-mail attachments and other means to transfer files from computer to computer, the use of floppy disks has waned, though they are still widely used to keep second (backup) copies of valuable files
A small portable flexible magnetic disk used for data storage on many microcomputers Floppies come in 3 and a half and 5 and a quarter inch sizes, with several densities and formats
Typically, a removable computer storage medium consisting of a thin flexible plastic disk, coated with a magnetic material on both sides The most common type, a 3 5-inch, is protected by a hard plastic case
A disk which is covered with protective packaging and can be removed from its drive Currently, floppy disks are generally 3 5 inches wide The protective covering on 3 5"_disks_is_hard plastics_prompting_some_to_think_that_these_are_hard_disks_but_they are_not __The_media_inside_is_the_same_floppy_material_as_that_inside the_older_5 25" disks Floppy disks also come in different densities and care must be taken to use a disk of appropriate density or data may be lost from the disk Floppy disks are noted for their relatively slow speed, small capacity, and low price
Portable storage media Not to be confused with Hard Disk named because old type 5¼ disks were floppy to touch, 3½ disks however have a rigid casing, but are still referred to as floppy Floppy disks are slower to access than hard disks and have less storage capacity Main advantage of floppy disks is that they are portable thus allowing data be taken from one computer and read on another Floppies come in two sizes
A physically flexible magnetic storage disk Note that both 3 5-in and the old 5 25-in diskettes are ``floppy '' 3 5-in diskettes typically can hold 1 44 MB of data Compare hard disk
(FD) A removable, portable magnetic disk on which data and programs can be stored Also called diskettes, floppies are flexible plastic The older 5-1/4 inch disks are more flexible; the 3-1/2 inch disks have a hard protective case around them and are the primary size used now
A relatively inexpensive, flexible, plastic disk for storing digital data on both sides of its magnetic surface The amount of data depends on the diameter of the disk and the technology for recording the data See DISK STORAGE
A removable storage medium Standard 3 5 inch floppy disks can store just over 1MB of information Because floppies have been the most widely used removable storage medium since the mid-to-late 1980s, they are the most convenient way to transfer files between computers
A removable disk, on which information can be stored and from which it can be retrieved There are two common varieties of floppy disks, referred to by their size: 5 25 inch and 3 5 inch The latter is enclosed in a hard plastic shell, but is still a ``floppy'' disk
A floppy disk is one of many kinds of computer file storage device Like the hard disk on your computer, a floppy disk will allow you to save a copy of a file to it Floppy disks have the advantage of being portable This allows files to be opened on different computers Compared to other storage devices they are quite 'small' This means their capacity to store files is limited (to 1 4Mb) They are still more than adequate for most people's needs, such as storing word processed documents