3 ms·
Better/more fine control of the read-write heads leading to more dense information storage. Floppy discs used a stepper motor, Zip drives used something more li
by codeulike 6y ago
Better/more fine control of the read-write heads leading to more dense information storage. Floppy discs used a stepper motor, Zip drives used something more like a modern hard disc actuator, see https://hddsurgery.com/blog/hdd-actuator https://hddsurgery.com/blog/hdd-actuator
- pmiller2 6y agoThis is mostly it. The floating head, plus the much smaller head size is what allows a more dense packing of tracks per inch on the disk. It's almost like having a mini HD where the platter is removable.
- ineedasername 6y agoplatter is removable I remember repairing discs by swapping to the shell of a new one when something like the mini spring broke.
- pmiller2 6y agoHah, fair enough. I suppose I should have said "designed to be removable." :)
- rainbowzootsuit 6y agoI had SyQuest 105MB and then later iomega Zip drives. The SyQuest cartridges had a translucent shell and it was a shiny metallic HDD platter in there while. When you put in a platter you got a whole sound of the HDD whir to spin up and then clackity-clack when the heads loaded and started moving around. Always a little tension until the drive mounted. I think the Zip used more of a brown plastic type of disk. The loading was more of a low chunck-chunck sound. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyQuest_Technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyQuest_Technology