Currently this magnetic medium is fast getting replaced by the �flash Rom� drives that they also know by Pen Drive or USB Drive. This new medium is killing the elderly magnetic medium for its reliability, speed and ever growing capacity.

Do you keep in mind the last time you used the FDD drive of your computer, and for what? Chance is in case you have used it then it would be for some emergency booting of the computer, or for recovery of your broken OS. Meaning you would have not used it for knowledge transfer using this medium.

Historicallyin the past the secondary storage is always in the realm of change. Know-how and needs are always pushing the medium smaller, faster, more reliable, secure and of expanding capacity. like some ten years back the five.25� dives were replaced by this three.5� drives for smaller size and bigger capacity.

History

Paper Punch Card

History of secondary storage is calm fascinating, as it's seen the use of papers to silicon to optical medium. With each generation it gets better, faster and smaller is size and always increasing the storage capacity.

Floppy Drive (8�)

Paper Punch cards used initially as the first outside storage tool. It used paper card/roll with holes as knowledge. Meaning a hole was zero, and no hole was. Programmers used to punch the card for providing input. Card printers were there to punch the output for storage.

One time the magnetic media began to be used for storage, paper media was quickly made obsolete. Magnetic disks of round shape emerged as the standard for secondary storage tool. It became popular as it was more robust and handy than the paper roll, and could store more knowledge.

Further advancement in the material & magnetic expertise provided better density & provided much higher storage capacity in smaller area. Now the disks also began to become double sided providing even more knowledge storage area in the same size disks.

Floppy Drive (five.25�)

This media peaked with the three.5� FDD that was tiny & sturdy to be carred in the denims pocket. Its case also provided cover even for the area that is used for reading, leading to more protection from dust & humidity even when the floppy was not in any cover.

Floppy Drive (three.5�)

This drive released in 1994 by a company called Iomega could holding 100MB of knowledge. This also makes use of the magnetic coating like the regular floppy disks,usb hard drive but of higher quality & of superior expertise. Due to this it needs specialized drives for reading & writing on this media. This made it a lovely backup drive (like tape drives), but not lovely for using it on any machine. Currently generation of Zip Disks can hold upto 250MB of knowledge.

Zip Drive

Flash Drive (USB Drive)

Also often called Pen Drive is the next revolution in secondary transportable storage tool. Initially emerged with couple of MB storage capacity, it quickly gained attraction due to its solid state rugged construction & its capability of being used on any computer equipped with USB port. Initially it needed a specific driver to be installed on the earlier OS in order to be used, but later, due to its universally open standard & rise in use of the USB port, its support was provided natively in the OS. (Windows/Macintosh/Linux supports it natively out of the box).

This standardization of protocol has lead to not only popularity of the USB flash drives, but has also provided a common way for other media to act as drive by this protocol. So now there's storage products making use of this standard to become USB drives (also called USB Mass Storage). Example includes:

- USB Hard Disk Drives

- Zip Drive with USB interface

- digital camera acting as an USB drives for accessing the photographs directly on any computer

- PDAs like Palm that already connect to the computer using USB acts as a USB drive for accessing the knowledge stored in its memory & SD/MMC Card

- Mp3 players that doubles as USB drive!!

So now virtually nothing more is necessary for this drive to work in the event you have a computer with a standard USB port. Though the manufacturers are also providing additional features to the hardware like encryption, but these features usually requires additional software/driver to be installed in order to be used. & since there is not much standard for these features yet it is mostly tool specific & is largely ignored for its lack of compatibility.

Currently one GB USB flash drives are available, & bigger drives are on the horizon.

The list of applications are getting bigger & bigger, ultimately making this drive a very popular & successful.

As mentioned above this medium is also getting popular & is popular chiefly for higher speed & capacity than what is currently provided by the USB flash drive. On the flip side it is still fragile (as having moving element) & bulkier than the flash drive.

Portable USB HDD

Last but not the least is this future product. This is the media of the future that makes use of expertise that is still in its infancy - holography. Though holography & holograms are not new & was discovered in the late 1940s, but its application for knowledge storage is something new. A company called InPhase Technologies is of the forerunners in this field that has prototyped disks that can hold 200GB to one.6TB of knowledge. This external usb drive expertise makes use of lasers for reading & writing the knowledge.

Why FDD is dying

Using this one.44MB floppy disk drive was always bit unreliable. They can all recall the "Sector 0 Bad" error, & myriad number of utilities supporting various recovery & advanced modifications like:

marking sectors bad (NDD - Norton Disk Doctor & its surface scan (ultimately acquired by Symantec & is part of its Norton Utilities Toolset right now). - Another popular utility was to generate another zero sector if the actual was gone bad. So what is remaining in the way of death of this magnetic medium? Only time! As of now few features still needs the magnetic floppy disk drive, like for booting for the first time, or for upgrading BIOS of the motherboard etc. This is due to it�s (FDDs) simple of programming at the lower level & more importantly for its inbuilt support in the BIOS program. So as soon as the modern BIOS start supporting the USB drives (motherboards have now began to come with this support) the floppy days are numbered.

Current Support of USB Devices by the Motherboard/BIOS

The current motherboards & BIOS have started the support of usb thumb drive as boot tool. Meaning you can have your whole operating method on this tool, or basically use it as the bootable floppy (imaging carrying your whole work including the programs & applications on a small keychain). Depending on the mode of usage resources are obtainable on the Web for configuring your USB drive. checkout the links provided below where it provides tips & tricks of doing so.

Speaking of simple of use of using this feature, the issue lies with the (Windows) OS right now that does not support making the USB drive bootable. It does let you format the USB drive & choose the file method format, but Make Booteble option is not present at all. Seldom mind as there's lot of tools & utilities obtainable (for all popular OS) that supports making it bootable, though you will must struggle a bit.

Future

As you see there is no need of Floppy Disks for any use/operation & is getting replaced speedy by the USB drives. Already major computer vendors have made FDD as optional feature. Now the time has come of the USB flash drive over the demise of the FDD.

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Resource:

Pen drive two GB capacity obtainable with Om Nanotech Pvt. Ltd. located in different parts of the world including India, Singapore and the United States. The product list comprises of products like Ram,Micron Memory part, DRAM, storage memory cards, usb disk drive and far more.