Clear the Confusion: Floppy Disk vs. Magnetic Tape

You can refer to our previous articles for more information on the types of external storage that exists. Up until now, some of us who weren’t born in the 90s must have been hearing these names and we never came in contact with one. This is because it was used way back in the olden days. Now, in case you are still a little bit confused about what a magnetic disk and tape mean. Here is a quick review.

Magnetic tape and magnetic disk both store data magnetically and also are non-volatile which means data is stored even after the power supply is turned off. The surface of both disks is covered with a magnetic material which helps in storing the information magnetically. The basic difference between them is that magnetic tape is used for backups whereas; magnetic disk is used as secondary storage.

Both the floppy disk and the magnetic tape are the oldest form of storage medium used. This article will run you through the basic differences between the floppy disk and the magnetic tape. Here’s how you can identify these two devices in great detail

Floppy Disk

The floppy disk was created sometime in the late 1960, when the cost of buying a hard drive was highly expensive at the time. The following are the distinct characteristics of a floppy disk:

1. Floppy disk is a magnetic disk encased in a rectangular plastic carrier, capable of holding electronic data.
2. A typical floppy disk holds about 1.44MB data and is removable and transferable from one device to another.
3. A floppy drive is used alongside the disk to read and write data on it. Since it has existed for a long time, most of the people born in the 2000s might not have come across one. They are cheap, lightweight and portable.

Magnetic Tape

Magnetic tape was introduced in 1928, earlier used as a secondary storage medium but now used as a Backup. The following are the distinct characteristics of a Magnetic tape:

1. It is a thin long narrow plastic strip coated with the magnetisable substance.
2. It contains reels of tape enclosed in the form of strips of plastic. The tape drive performs the reading and writing of data on the tape.
3. The magnetic tapes store the data sequentially.
4. The random access to magnetic tapes takes more time than magnetic disk because the magnetic tape has to perform forward and rewind operation to locate a correct spot.
5. It typically stores from 20 GB to 200 GB.
6. Unlike other storage devices which can read and write data, magnetic tape data can only be written i.e. data can’t be updated after being fed on the tape. This makes it very significant in its usage as a Backup storage.

References

1. https://techdifferences.com/

2. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/

3. https://www.computerhope.com/

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