A floppy disk drive has a motor that spins the disk on a spindle, and a read/write head that can move to any spot on the disk's surface. This capability is important, because it allows the heads to acces data randomly, rather than search through everything in between.

Diskettes, often called floppies, spin around 300 revolutions per minute. Therefore the time it would take for the head to move from the center to the edge, would be approximately 0.17 second. Actually, this access time could be greater, because the drive does not spin when not in use. It could take up to 0.5 second to start the disk from a dead spot.

The most common uses for diskettes are:

• Moving files between computers
• Installing new programs onto a system
• Backing up data from computer

In the 1980's, computers used diskettes that were 5.25" square. Today, the size has shrunk, and the capacity has become larger. A 3.5" diskette is housed in a hard plastic casing with a sliding metal cover. When a disk is inserted into a drive, the cover is slid back to expose the magnetic surface.

Standard capacities of Disks:

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