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What on earth are floppy disks doing in a museum!
Over the years, there have been several different
types of data storage, and as technology has progressed, so has the
capacities of storage media. There have been many different types of
floppy disk, all with varying capacities; this page covers three
such types, mainly because they are the ones that I have in my
collection; they are as follows:
The three different types of disks that I have in my
collection, 5.25" disks, 3.5" disks and Amstrad CF2 (3")
disks. |
Below is a chart that displays the capacities of each
type of disk, and compares their capacities to CD-ROM and
DVD-ROM media.
To the right is a graph that shows the varying capacities of
the three disk types as bars, this gives a visual
representation for easy comparison.
These disks are examined in more detail below:
Click on the 5.25" disk for more information about that type
of disk, and my experiences with it. |
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The Amstrad CF2 disks are quite enigmatic, there is not a lot of information about these disks
around, they were quite rare, and were only used on systems manufactured
by Amstrad in the 1980s.
The front of the disk drive looks quite similar to the
front of a 3.5" Disk drive:
And yet, the disk itself looks completely different.
Here is a capacity comparison table:
| Disk Type |
Physical Size of Disk |
Disk Capacity |
Number required to store the capacity of one
700Mb CD-Rom |
Number required to store the capacity of one
4.7Gb DVD-Rom |
|
5.25" Disks |
13.5cm (5.25inch)square. |
720K |
996 |
6,263 |
| 1.2Mb |
584 |
3,670 |
|
3" CF2 Disks |
8cm by 10cm
3 inch by 3.9inch |
500K |
1,434 |
9,018 |
|
3.5" Disks |
9cm by 9.5cm
3.5inch by 3.7inch |
720K |
996 |
6,263 |
| 1.44Mb |
487 |
3,058 |
| 2.88Mb |
244 |
1,529 |
|
Iomega Zip Disks |
10cm (3.8inch) square. |
100Mb |
7 |
45 |
| 250Mb |
3 |
18 |
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