3.5" FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) is Dead! Long live the USB Drive!

Writen by Akhilesh Singh

Do you remember the last time you used the FDD drive of your computer, and for what? Chance is if you have used it then it would be for some emergency booting of the computer, or for recovery of your broken OS. Meaning you would have not used it for data transfer using this medium.

Currently this magnetic medium is fast getting replaced by the “flash Rom” drives that we also know by Pen Drive or USB Drive. This new medium is killing the old magnetic medium for its reliability, speed and ever growing capacity.

Historically the secondary storage is always in the realm of change. Technology and needs are always pushing the medium smaller, faster, more reliable, secure and of expanding capacity. Just like some 10 years back the 5.25″ dives were replaced by this 3.5″ drives for smaller size and larger capacity.

History

History of secondary storage is quiet interesting, as it has seen the use of papers to silicon to optical medium. With each generation it gets better, faster and smaller is size and always increasing the storage capacity.

Paper Punch Card
Paper Punch cards used initially as the first external storage device. It used paper card/roll with holes as data. Meaning a hole was zero, and no hole was one. Programmers used to punch the card for providing input. Card printers were there to punch the output for storage.

Floppy Drive (8″)
Once the magnetic media started to be used for storage, paper media was quickly made obsolete. Magnetic disks of round shape emerged as the standard for secondary storage device. It became very popular as it was more robust and handy than the paper roll, and could store more data.

Floppy Drive (5.25″)
Further advancement in the material and magnetic technology provided better density and provided much higher storage capacity in smaller area. Now the disks also started to become double sided providing even more data storage area in the same size disks.

Floppy Drive (3.5″)
This media peaked with the 3.5″ FDD that was small and sturdy enough to be carred in the jeans pocket. Its case also provided cover even for the area that is used for reading, resulting in more protection from dust and humidity even when the floppy was not in any cover.

Zip Drive
This drive released in 1994 by a company called Iomega was capable of holding 100MB of data. This also uses the magnetic coating like the regular floppy disks, but of higher quality and of superior technology. Due to this it needs specialized drives for reading and writing on this media. This made it a good backup drive (like tape drives), but not good for using it on any machine. Currently generation of Zip Disks can hold upto 250MB of data.

Flash Drive (USB Drive)
Also known as Pen Drive is the next revolution in secondary portable storage device. Initially emerged with couple of MB storage capacity, it quickly gained attraction due to its solid state rugged construction and its capability of being used on any computer equipped with USB port. Initially it needed a specific driver to be installed on the earlier OS in order to be used, but later, due to its universally open standard and rise in use of the USB port, its support was provided natively in the OS. (Windows/Macintosh/Linux supports it natively out of the box).

So now virtually nothing more is needed for this drive to work if you have a computer with a standard USB port. Though the manufacturers are also providing additional features to the hardware like encryption, but these features generally requires additional software/driver to be installed in order to be used. And since there is not much standard for these features yet it is mostly device specific and is largely ignored for its lack of compatibility.

This standardization of protocol has lead to not only popularity of the USB flash drives, but has also provided a common way for other media to act as drive via this protocol. So now there are storage products making use of this standard to become USB drives (also called USB Mass Storage). Example includes:
– USB Hard Disk Drives
– Zip Drive with USB interface
– digital camera acting as an USB drive for accessing the photographs directly on any computer
– PDAs like Palm that already connect to the computer using USB acts as a USB drive for accessing the data stored in its memory and SD/MMC Card
– Mp3 players that doubles as USB drive!!

The list of applications are getting bigger and bigger, ultimately making this drive a very popular and successful.

Currently 1 GB USB flash drives are available, and bigger drives are on the horizon.

Portable USB HDD
As mentioned above this medium is also getting popular and is popular mainly for higher speed and capacity than what is currently provided by the USB flash drive. On the flip side it is still fragile (as having moving element) and bulkier than the flash drive.

Holographic Drives
Last but not the least is this future product. This is the media of the future that uses technology that is still in its infancy – holography. Though holography and holograms are not new and was discovered in the late 1940s, but its application for data storage is something very new. A company called InPhase Technologies is one of the forerunners in this field that has prototyped disks that can hold 200GB to 1.6TB of data. This technology uses lasers for reading and writing the data.

Why FDD is dying
Using this 1.44MB floppy disk drive was always bit unreliable. We can all recall the “Sector 0 Bad” error, and myriad number of utilities supporting various recovery and advanced modifications like:
– One marking sectors bad (NDD – Norton Disk Doctor and its surface scan (ultimately acquired by Symantec and is part of its Norton Utilities Toolset right now).
– Another very popular utility was to create another zero sector if the actual one was gone bad.

So what is remaining in the way of death of this magnetic medium? Only time!

As of now few features still needs the magnetic floppy disk drive, like for booting for the first time, or for upgrading BIOS of the motherboard etc. This is due to it’s (FDDs) easy of programming at the lower level and more importantly for its inbuilt support in the BIOS program. So as soon as the modern BIOS start supporting the USB drives (motherboards have now started to come with this support) the floppy days are numbered.

Current Support of USB Devices by the Motherboard/BIOS
The current motherboards and BIOS have started the support of USB drive as boot device. Meaning you can have your whole operating system on this device, or simply use it as the bootable floppy (imaging carrying your whole work including the programs and applications on a small keychain). Depending on the mode of usage resources are available on the Internet for configuring your USB drive. Please checkout the links provided below where it provides tips and tricks of doing so.

Speaking of easy of use of using this feature, the problem lies with the (Windows) OS right now that does not support making the USB drive bootable. It does allow you to format the USB drive and choose the file system format, but Make Booteble option is not present at all. Never mind as there are lot of tools and utilities available (for all popular OS) that supports making it bootable, though you will have to struggle a bit.

Future
As you see there is very little need of Floppy Disks for any use/operation and is getting replaced fast by the USB drives. Already major computer vendors have made FDD as optional feature. Now the time has come of the USB flash drive over the demise of the FDD.

Visit author’s site for more information about the author as well as get access to more articles on various topics. http://www.akhilesh.in.

Firewire Hard Disks

Writen by David Stone

Firewire is a technogy for transferring data between computers or their periphial devices like external hard disk drives. In the early 1990’s Apple developed the technology that became Firewire. Its technical name is IEEE 1394, and there are a few updates that have improved transfer rates. The original was capable of about 100-400 Mb/s on a cable up to 14 feet in length.

Firewire made its debut on the PowerMac G3 and has since spread to many other products and computers. Its popularity was due to its simplicity and its great speed. USB was the closest competitor and it only claimed data transfer rates of about 12 Mb/s. The only problem was that USB had originally been made for all personal computers, not just Apple, and it had been out first so it was already in use. Firewire was widely used in the entertainment business and actually won 2001 Primetime Emmy Engineering Award in 2001 for the impact that it had.

Using Firewire for an external hard disk is a great application of the technology. The cord is relatively small so that portability can be maximized. Now, more than ever, we are sharing information and that means we need ways to carry it. A Firewire drive also offers an easy expansion to your current computer. Hard disks’ failure rate goes up extensively when they are filled with data beyond 70% of their capacity. A problem with these types of disk drives is that you do need to supply the power. This adds another plug to your already cluttered power strip and the cord needs to be carried with it if you would like to use it on a remote computer.

Firewire is now a very fast transfer rate that has had a couple of updates since its emergence. The first was named IEEE 1384-1995 in 1995, and it was not improved upon until 2000 with the release of IEEE 1384-2000. The newest version, IEEE 1384b is capable of speeds up to 800 Mb/s and is the current standard in Firewire technology.

Find more information about hard disks at http://hard-disk-help.info

Knowing Your Computer: Types of Memory

Writen by Michael Russell

All computers require memory to operate. The main computer memory is Random Access Memory, or RAM for short. It is called this because the data contained in it can be accessed in any, or random, order. It is produced on small circuit boards in the form of sticks, which are often referred to as sticks of memory. Information is stored in the memory as it awaits being processed by the central processing unit, or CPU. It is essential to have the right type and speed of memory to ensure your system is operating optimally.

The main type of memory used today in desktop computer systems is Synchronous Dynamic RAM (SDRAM). With in the past several years, Double Data Rate SDRAM (DDR SDRAM, or simply DDR) has become the standard for most systems, with older memory now being referred to as Single Data Rate (SDR SDRAM). Occasionally, systems use Rambus Dynamic RAM (RDRAM) or DDR2 RAM, which are slightly different and are outside of the scope of this article.

SDRAM is different from other forms of asynchronous memory because it waits for each clock, or computing cycle, before it responds to inputs. These clocks happen very fast in computers (millions of times a second) but still the speed of the memory is ultimately limited by the computer bus. This is the wiring on the main- or motherboard in the system that connects all the components. The processor and memory can both handle high clock speeds, but if the speed of the system bus is low, they will be limited by the lowest speed. It is important that they all operate at similar speeds to operate most efficiently. For example, SDR SDRAM comes in PC66, PC100 and PC133; these numbers refer to the clock speed of the RAM in megahertz (a million cycles a second): 66 MHz, 100 MHz and so forth. If the system bus speed is rated at 100 MHz and the memory at 66 MHz, then the memory isn’t operating as quickly as it could and PC100 memory should be purchased. Of course, if PC133 were purchased for this same system, the extra 33 MHz would simply be wasted because the system bus can only handle 100 MHz.

Double Data Rate (DDR) memory is very similar to traditional SDRAM except it transfers data twice during each clock cycle. This doubles the transfer rate of the memory while the system bus stays the same. So a 100 MHz system bus that handles DDR memory can effectively use 200 MHz RAM. DDR comes in many speeds, each with two designations. On the box or somewhere in the specifications, the memory will be referred to as DDR-xxx, where the xxx is replaced by the effective clock speed of the memory, such as 200 as in the previous example. It will also list a PC-xxxx number, where xxxx represents the bandwidth of the entire stick of memory. This is not particularly important to understand for novices. The most common are: DDR-200/PC-1600, which operates at a clock speed of 100 MHz (effectively 200 MHz), DDR-266/PC-2100, which operates at 133 MHz (effectively 266 MHz), DDR-333/PC-2700, operating at 166 MHz (333 MHz) and DDR-400/PC-3200, which operates at 200 MHz (400 MHz).

It is very important to know which type (SDR or DDR SDRAM) and speed of memory your system uses and to always purchase this type when upgrading or replacing your memory. You can usually find this information in the manual or contact the manufacturer.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Computer Memory