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| Because most of our computers Memory (RAM) is temporary, its contents are erased when we switch off the power. We need a place to store the Operating System, application programs and our work. That’s where disks come in, we store any information you want to keep onto disks. |
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| There are two types of disk: |
| 1. Floppy disks & |
| 2. Hard disks. |
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| 1. Floppy disks (Diskettes) |
| A disk is a magnetically coated disk of thin plastic, inside a rigid plastic cover. |
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| We can use Floppy disks to: |
| • Transfer information from one computer to another. |
| • Store the Operating System, or application program and our work, if we don’t have a Hard disk. |
| • Keep a copy of information that we have on our Hard disk (Backup). |
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| We need only format a disk once. After that, we can use the disk again and again without having to reformat it. Formatting a disk we have previously used erases any data on the disk, so only reformat a disk if we are sure we don’t need any of the data on it. |
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| Choosing disks |
| Diskettes come in various forms, so it is important to choose diskettes that match the type of diskette drive installed in our computer. |
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| Several different types are available: |
| • 5.25inch 360 Kbytes – Very rarely used now |
| • 5.25inch 1.2 Mbytes – Uncommon but still in use |
| • 3.5inch 720 Kbytes – Getting less common, still in use |
| • 3.5inch 1.44 Mbytes – The standard in most modern computers. |
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