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3.5" FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) is Dead! Long live the Zipmem USB Drive!
Date Added: November 03, 2011 10:14:25 AM
Author: omnanotech
Category: Computers & Internet

Do you keep in mind the last time you used the FDD drive of your computer, and for what? Chance is in case 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 knowledge transfer using this medium. Historicallyin the past the secondary storage is always in the realm of change. Know-how and needs are always pushing the medium smaller, faster, more reliable, secure and of expanding capacity. like some ten years back the five.25â dives were replaced by this three.5â drives for smaller size and bigger capacity.  History  Paper Punch Card History of secondary storage is calm fascinating, as it's 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.  Floppy Drive (8â) Paper Punch cards used initially as the first outside storage tool. It used paper card/roll with holes as knowledge. Meaning a hole was zero, and no hole was. Programmers used to punch the card for providing input. Card printers were there to punch the output for storage. One time the magnetic media began to be used for storage, paper media was quickly made obsolete. Magnetic disks of round shape emerged as the standard for secondary storage tool. It became popular as it was more robust and handy than the paper roll, and could store more knowledge. Further advancement in the material & magnetic expertise provided better density & provided much higher storage capacity in smaller area. Now the disks also began to become double sided providing even more knowledge storage area in the same size disks.  Floppy Drive (five.25â) This media peaked with the three.5â FDD that was tiny & sturdy to be carred in the denims pocket. Its case also provided cover even for the area that is used for reading, leading to more protection from dust & humidity even when the floppy was not in any cover. Floppy Drive (three.5â) This drive released in 1994 by a company called Iomega could holding 100MB of knowledge. This also makes use of the magnetic coating like the regular floppy disks, usb hard drive but of higher quality & of superior expertise. Due to this it needs specialized drives for reading & writing on this media. This made it a lovely backup drive (like tape drives), but not lovely for using it on any machine. Currently generation of Zip Disks can hold upto 250MB of knowledge.   Zip Drive Flash Drive (USB Drive) Also often called Pen Drive is the next revolution in secondary transportable storage tool. Initially emerged with couple of MB storage capacity, it quickly gained attraction due to its solid state rugged construction & 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 & 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). 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 by this protocol. So now there's storage products making use of this standard to become USB Drive. (also called USB Mass Storage). Example includes: - USB Hard Disk Drives - Zip Drive with USB interface - digital camera acting as an USB Drives  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 knowledge stored in its memory & SD/MMC Card - Mp3 players that doubles as USB drive!! So now virtually nothing more is necessary for this drive to work in the event 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 usually requires additional software/driver to be installed in order to be used. & since there is not much standard for these features yet it is mostly tool specific & is largely ignored for its lack of compatibility. Currently one GB USB flash drives are available, & bigger drives are on the horizon. The list of applications are getting bigger & bigger, ultimately making this drive a very popular & successful. As mentioned above this medium is also getting popular & is popular chiefly for higher speed & capacity than what is currently provided by the USB flash drive. On the flip side it is still fragile (as having moving element) & bulkier than the flash drive. Portable USB HDD Last but not the least is this future product. This is the media of the future that makes use of expertise that is still in its infancy