PC Hardware in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Choosing a High-Capacity Floppy Disk Drive

Use the following guidelines when choosing a high-capacity FDD:

If you need to exchange data bidirectionally with other people or computers not on your network

Buy a drive compatible with the media in use. SuperDisk Drives and Zip Drives cannot read or write each other’s media. SuperDisk Drives are common on recent Compaq computers, but are seldom seen elsewhere. Zip Drives are by far the most commonly used superfloppy, so installing one allows you to exchange data with more people. The Zip250 Drive can read and write both 100 and 250 MB media, and so offers the most flexibility. It also transfers data about twice as fast as the Zip100 Drive.

If you need to send data to other people or computers, but will not receive data from them

Do not buy a superfloppy. Buy a CD-RW drive and a supply of inexpensive CD-R disks. Nearly everyone has a CD-ROM drive that can read the CDs you produce, and sending people a $0.50 CD-R disc is a lot less painful than sending them a $10 floppy.

If you will use the drive to back up and/or archive data

Do not buy a superfloppy. They are unsuited to this purpose because they are slow and use costly and relatively unreliable media. If backup is your primary need, buy a tape drive. If you need to archive data permanently, buy a CD-RW drive and archive the data to CD-R disks. If you can afford only one drive, and if 650 MB is enough capacity to back up your important data, buy a 10X CD-RW drive and some CD-RW disks, which ...