Chapter 5

The Floppy Disk Drive and LS-120 Drive

Installing A Floppy Disk Drive

Floppy Disk Drive

Power socket
Pin 34 Pin 1
Twisted Cable
(Connector above Power Connector
it is A: drive) (Berg connector)

Connector for
floppy B: drive

Red Line (indicates Pin 1 of Cable)

Goes to Pin 1 of Floppy Drive Socket

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Data and Disk Organisation (Physical)
How is the 3 ½” Floppy Disk being What is High-level formatting?
logically organized? High-level format uses the structure
It is organized into Side. And each side created to creates the File Allocation
are made up of Tracks. There 80 tracks Table and the Root Directory.
on each side. Each track contains 18
Sectors. Each Sector provides 512
Track
bytes of storage space. Data stores
along the
Track
Do Floppy Disk need to be formatted?
Yes, Disk need to be formatted before
use. There are 2 levels: low-level
formatting and high-level formatting.

What is Low-level formatting?

Low-level formatting permanently
creates the tracks. Sector

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Data and Disk Organisation (Logical)
How are the data stored in the Floppy How does the OS keep tracks of the
Disk? Data Cluster?
Data are stored on the disk in Cluster Each cluster has an address. OS keep
the list of the clusters in FAT.
What is a Cluster?
A cluster is the smallest unit of data
that is read/write to the floppy disk. A
cluster is also called file allocation unit.

What is Cluster made up of?

Each cluster is made up of a number of
sectors. For the 3 ½” floppy, 1 cluster is
formed by 1 sector (each sector is 512
byte). (Top and bottom
Sectors = 1 cluster)

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Formatting a Diskette
How can you format a Diskettes? How to format a Diskette in Windows?
There are 2 methods to format a My Computer, Right-click A: drive,
diskette: Format, Quick Erase
1. Using DOS command FORMAT
2. Using Windows What are the common switches (option)
used with Format?
How to format a Diskette in DOS? 1. /S to copy system files
You can either: 2. /U for unconditioned format
1. At the DOS prompt, type FORMAT 3. /V to add a label after formatting
A: OR Eg format a: /s
2. Click Start, RUN, Type FORMAT A:

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Bootable Disk
What is a Bootable Diskette? How are the attribute of both
A diskette from which you can boot MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS?
your computer They are Hidden (H), Read-only (R), and
mark as System files (S)
When do you need to use the Bootable
disk? Is the Windows Startup Disk the same
as Bootable Disk?
Normally, your computer boots from a
hard disk, but if the hard disk is A Windows 9x Startup Disk is a
damaged (for example, by a virus), you Bootable Disk. However, a Bootable Disk
is NOT necessary a Startup Disk. A
can boot the computer from a bootable Startup Disk contains Utilities
diskette

What are the files need to be present

in the Diskette in order to Boot a PC?
Floppy disk will boot your PC if it
contains these OS files: MSDOS.SYS,
IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM.

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Creating/Using a Bootable Diskette
How to create a Bootable Diskette in What do you need to do if you cannot
Windows? boot from a working bootable disk?
1. Double-click My Computer Check the Boot Sequence in the CMOS
2. Right-click the A: drive setting
3. Click Format
4. Click Copy System Files How do you Change the Boot Sequence?
5. Click Start Restart the PC and get into the CMOS
Change the Boot Sequence to boot from
A: drive first
How to create a Bootable Diskette
using DOS?
1. Start, Program, MS-DOS prompt
2. At the DOS prompt, type SYS A:

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Common Floppy Disk Error Messages
Non-system disk or disk error. Replace Trying to boot from a non-bootable disk.
and strike any key when ready.

Invalid or missing COMMAND.COM Both IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS are present in

the diskette. But COMMAND.COM is either
Missing or Corrupted
Incorrect DOS version Error appers when using DOS utilities like
FORMAT. Indicates utilities does not belong
to the OS version.
Invalid Drive Specification Trying to access a drive that the OS does not
know eg Z:
Not ready reading drive A: Abort, Floppy in Drive A is non-readable (damaged).
Retry, Fail?
General failure reading drive A: Abort, Floppy disk is badly damaged, not formatted
Retry,Fail? or Floppy Drive is bad.
Track 0 bad, disk not usable Bad master boot record. Disk is not usable

Write-protect error writing drive A: Disk is write-protected.

Post Error Code 6xx

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‘Phantom Directory’
How does the ‘Phantom Directory’ that How can it be Rectified?
occurs in Floppy Diskette? Re-attached the cable properly, or
It occurs when you list directory (DIR) change another cable. And if problem
a floppy disk, then inserts a new floppy persist, change the drive
disk and list directory again. You see
the contents of the First disk.

What is the Cause?

It is cause by either:
1. Signal Line 34 on the cable is bad
2. Defective Pin 34 in Floppy drive

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LS-120 Drive
What is the LS-120 Disk Drive? How is it physically installed in the PC?
It is also called Superdisk and each It uses ATAPI IDE interface, the same
diskette can store up to 120MB of data interface as CD-ROM and hard disk.
( equivalent to about 83 3 ½” 1.44MB USB interface is also available.
floppies).
Do you need to install the driver for the
Can it read 1.44MB floppy? drive?
Yes. It is backward compatible to 3 ½” There is no need to install the driver in
floppy. It has a transfer rate of Windows 98 and Windows 95 (OSR2).
750Kb/s compared to 300Kb/s of the Where LS-120 is non-bootable, it takes
1.44MB floppy disk drive. D: while CD-ROM drive takes E: (Do not
change the drive letter)
What faster is the transfer rate
compared to 3 ½” Floppy?
It has a transfer rate of 750Kb/s
compared to 300Kb/s of the 1.44MB
floppy disk drive.

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