Windows® 98 Unleashed

Formatting a Floppy Disk

Floppy disks come in two standard sizes: 5 1/4-inch and 3 1/2-inch. The 5 1/4-inch disks are the veterans of the PC wars. They've been around, in one form or another, since the days of the earliest PCs. They come in two capacities: double-density and high-density. (Actually, the term double-density is relatively meaningless in this day and age. It originates from the old days of computers—way back in the 1980s—when there were such things as single-density disks. You often see double-density disks referred to as low-density or regular-density.) The 5 1/4-inch double-density disks have a storage capacity of 360KB, and the high-density variety can store 1.2MB.

Although 3 1/2-inch disks are relatively new kids on the floppy ...