Diskettes - Floppies

Diskettes are also often referred to as "disks" - but try to break that habit, since a disk can also be a hard drive.  These are the traditional "floppies", and basically have the same structure of a single hard drive platter - except the density is much lower, and therefore, they do not hold much data (1.44 MB is the storage of a standard 3 1/2" floppy).  The older floppies were 5 1/2" in diameter and held 1.2 MB (360k or 720k for the really old ones). 

Diskettes - the Virus Carriers

The reason diskettes are so famous for spreading viruses is that they are portable, and they have a boot sector, where almost all viruses choose to reside.

Also, diskettes are flexible - the diskette does not feel "floppy" to you, because there is a hard plastic housing around it - but if you break one apart, as shown below, you will see that it is a flexible plastic circle . . .  

Diskettes have a small plastic tab which you can slide in either direction, to either cover a hole, or leave it open.  When the hole is covered, you can save files on the diskette.  When the hole is open, the diskette is "write protected" - you can't write to it (write files means to save or copy files).  The easiest way to memorize which is which, is to think of closing the hole as completing a circuit, from which data can then flow into the diskette - and when the hole is open, the circuit is not complete, and no data can flow.  Why am I telling you this little silly method??  Because I kept forgetting it for years, until I started thinking about it that way!

*** since diskettes are the most common source of viruses, this little sliding piece of plastic can save you one helluva lot of greif - so keep it open (remember, "open" closes the disk  - odd, hence my memorization method above) whenever you take a diskette to a friend's to copy some files to his PC.  Even though you are only sending files from the diskette to his PC - his PC can still send viruses to the boot sector on the diskette !!

*** beware of any and all diskettes from anyone, including friends and family - McAffee virus software will immediately scan the disk when you insert it, so make sure you have McAffee loaded 

The death of the diskette has been predicted for year now, but you still see diskette drives on all PC's . . . and they are still used quite a bit, especially for taking documents between work and home, or between two PC's.  To be honest, I rarely use them anymore, since the same files can simply be emailed very quickly.