Using Disks And Disk Drives; How Disks Work - Epson Equity III User Manual

Using Disks and Disk Drives

The disk drives in your computer allow you to store data on disk, and
retrieve and use stored data when you like. All Equity III+ systems have at
least one floppy disk drive; you may also have a hard disk drive and/or a
second floppy disk drive in your system. This chapter explains how disks
work and tells you how to:
Choose floppy disks
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Care for your disks and disk drives
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Protect your data
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Use a single floppy disk drive
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Use a hard disk drive.
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How Disks Work

The floppy disks (diskettes) you insert in your system's floppy disk drives
are round pieces of flexible plastic coated with magnetic material and
enclosed in protective jackets. Like a record, a diskette has circular tracks on
both sides. The computer stores the data you enter as magnetic patterns on
these circular tracks.
A small read/write head in the disk drive interprets the magnetic pat-
terns. When a diskette is in a drive, the read/write head is right over the
large oval hole in the diskette jacket. This hole allows the read/write head to
access the diskette when you store, retrieve, and delete data.
Unlike a floppy disk, a hard disk is rigid and fixed in place. It is sealed in
a protective environment free of dust and dirt, so you cannot see it. A hard
disk stores data the same way as a floppy disk, only it works faster and has a
much larger storage capacity.
Because data is stored magnetically, you can retrieve it, record over it, and
erase it-just as you play, record, and erase music on cassette tapes.
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