12 January 2020

Differentiate between Floppy Disk and Hard Disk

As we know that, the hard disk is a mechanical drive with multiple disks capable of storing 8  Terabytes if not more worth of data. The disk drive is capable of reaching read and write speeds of 300 MB/s. While in the floppy disk is a small plastic storage device typically capable of no more than 1.44Megabytes or storage. It is also now rather outdated thanks to the advancement in today's technologies. Generally, the floppy disk is capable of reaching 250-300 bit/s read/write speed. The hard disk is a magnetic disk on which you can store computer data while diskette is random access, a removable data storage medium that can be used with personal computers. Based on the respective working conditions advantages of floppy disk and advantages of a hard disk are different also have some advantages of Hard disk over floppy disk and limitations of the hard disk over the floppy disk. Here some difference between floppy disk vs hard disk to better understand this topic.

The main key difference between the floppy disk and hard disk are given below:

  • The hard disk is a circular piece of mylar or plastic-like material coated with iron oxide while the hard is a stack of few thin metal plates, usually coated, usually coated on both sides with magnetized material.
  • Hard disk has much more storage capacity than a floppy disk.
  • Slower access time while hard disk has faster access time.
  • In the floppy disk, the data is recorded in the form of magnetic dots on spots on tracks while in hard disk the data is stored as magnetic spots on tracks that concentric circles on the surface of disks.
  • The hard disk is the flexible disk is housed in a plastic jacket but in hard disk is flexible is housed in a metal jacket.
  • While use floppy disk the flexible disk is housed in a plastic jacket, hard disk is often called a fixed disk.
  • Floppy disk holds less data that is 1.1.4 MB, hard disks hold more data that is several GBs.
  • Floppy disk drive only begins rotating when they are required to read or write data, but in hard disk drive spin continuously. They start rotating when a computer is switched on.
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