Monday, July 8, 2013

What is the Difference between hard disk and floppy disk?

credit to www.answerbag.com

Both are magnetic data recording media, but the magnetic coating on a floppy disk is on a sheet of flexible plastic, where the hard disk's recording surfaces are on rigid disks

The hard drive is much faster than a floppy drive. Typically it takes around a minute to record 1MB on a floppy disk, 1 second to record 50MB on a hard disk.

The floppy disk is small, around 1.44 MB (other sizes have existed), the hard disk is much larger, (hundreds of gigabytes) and getting bigger every day. 

Hard disk is usually built into a computer and is a fixed part of the computer's configuration. The floppy disk can be put into the floppy drive at any time.

The hard drive is usually much more reliable than a floppy disk. This makes it surprising that floppy disks were often used as backup media. 

Floppy disk is largely obsolete, having been superseded by writable CDs and DVDs, the flash drive, other external USB drives, and ubiquitous networking. The hard drive is with us now and for the foreseeable future, although solid-state disks are beginning to make inroads in situations where vibration resistance, weight, and speed are more important than cost.

Floppy disks are available in a wide range of attractive colours but hard drives are usually silver or black.


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