User's Manual

How Diskettes Work
The diskettes you insert in your computer’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. Your computer stores the data you enter as
magnetic patterns on these circular tracks.
A small read/write head in the computer’s disk drive
interprets the magnetic patterns. When you put a
diskette 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 as
you store, retrieve, and delete data.
Because the data is stored magnetically you can
retrieve it, record over it, and erase it—just as you
would when you play, record, and erase music on
cassette tapes.
3-2 Using
Diskettes and Disk Drives