ibm format floppy disk can be used on any computer

This can be confusing.ģ.5' The 2.8MB drive was marketed as ED. Some other disks will be flippies single sided but with a second index hole so the disk could be flipped over and written on the unused side. Disks for those are fairly obvious by having an extra ring of holes. Both are rare but the chance of finding a system with one make looking at older computers more fun.Įdit: Unlikely to be found with IBM, Commodore, or Apple systems, but early drives were hard sectored. Then there are the weird 5.25' drives which include Apple's Twiggy (1+ MB) and various DriveTec/Kodak drives which handled 3, 6 and 12 MB plus could read and write DS/DD disks. More common on DEC systems.ĭS/QD: 720kB when used by PC Compatibles. SS/QD: Frequently sold as 360kB so watch out for it. Now for an oddball you skipped, the so called quad density which fall between double density and high density. Probably the most frequently used 5.25' drive with different capacities depending on computer. Apple and Commodore used the same disks with similar capacities which also changed depending on revision.ĭS/DD: Yes, 360kB for IBM and several Apple and Commodore drives also used it.

Revisions to DOS increased that to 180kB. SS/DD: This was originally 160kB for IBM PC. But if you see a 5.25' system with less than 100kB capacity then it likely used SS/SD disks. Many PC controllers can't even do single density reads. Standard 3.5' DS/HD drives are compatible with DS/HD, DS/DD SS = single sided, DS = double sided, SD = single density, DD = double density, HD = high density, QD= quad density, ED=Extended Density(quad density). Also would 5.25' hd drives be able to read all the previous types of disks(ss/sd, ss/dd ds/dd)? I am going to try to list the major type of floppy please help me fill in where my information is wrong or missing and hopefully this will be a useful reference. For example my new commodore 1541 disk drive states that it uses 5.25' SS/SD but I have never seen a SS/SD and don't know if they are referring to SS/DD? Plus when I looked up DS/DD drives I even found a site saying they were 720k but I have a brand new box of them sitting next to me that states 360k. I have tried finding good reference information online that contains the standard sizes of floppy disks used in mainstream computers but it seems fairly rare to find this information and when I do it quite often conflicts with what I thought I knew. Hey guys I just got a lot of new commodore stuff lately and since I now have commodore floppies, apple floppies, and PC floppies it is getting difficult to keep track of them all.

Ibm format floppy disk can be used on any computer