Disk drives record information on disks and retrieve information from disks. Sometimes the information is an application; sometimes, a document. It's all the same to the disk drive.
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Disk drives record information on disks and retrieve information from disks. Sometimes the information is an application; sometimes, a document. It's all the same to the disk drive. | |||
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Figure 6-7 | |||
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The most popular type of disk drive for the Apple IIGS is the 3.5-inch drive. It uses 3.5-inch disks that each hold 800K (about 400 pages) of text. You can attach one or two of them to your computer. The advantage of having two drives is that you can use one for the application program disk and one for the document disk. (If you have only one drive, you have to trade your application disk for your document disk when you want to save your document.) | |||
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You can also use 5.25-inch drives with the Apple IIGS (or a combination of 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch drives). The 5.25-inch drive uses 5.25-inch disks that each hold 143K (about 70 pages) of text. The 5.25-inch drive was the original disk drive (and for many years the only type of disk drive) available for the Apple II. Consequently, lots of people own them, and thousands of applications are still sold on 5.25-inch disks. The 5.25-inch drive stores less information per disk, accesses that information a little more slowly, and takes up more desk space than the 3.5-inch drive, but it's 100% compatible with the Apple IIGS, and it makes sense to use one if you already have a library of 5.25-inch application program disks or you share disks with others using 5.25-inch drives. | ||
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| Chapter 6: Peripheral devices | ||