B drive

[addied]

Whatever happened to the 'B' drive?

[sft42]

The "B" drive was the very old 5.25 inch floppys (big huge black things that weren't all that floppy...remember?)....The designation of the letter was always kept though and never used for anything else though with Dell amongst others now offering computers without a 3.5 inch floppy we may see a change to this convention at some point in the future.

[Phantaxus]

History Lesson - the first pc's originally had 5.25" floppy drives (360k and 1.2mb versions) this was assigned to A: then came the 3.5" floppy (720k and 1.44mb versions) if you had one of these it was assigned to B: over time the 5.25" floppy was made obselete and the 3.5" floppy was reassigned to A: The connection plug to connect the extra floppy to is still on most modern floppy drive cables so if you connect a floppy drive to it and set it up in the BIOS you will get a drive B

[anthomson]

I am so old that my first PC didn't have a hard disk drive - so two floppies were essential ( one for your source and one for your compiler ). As pointed out above the B: drive remained popular after the introduction of hard drives because it meant you could have a drive of each size. Note however that not all PC's stuck to this convention. Apricots would assign B: to their hard drive. I remember somebody accidently formatting an apricot hard drive whilst trying to format a floppy disk - he wasn't a happy bunny ( but it gave the rest of us a good laugh )

[answerbok]

also, why still call A:\ a floppy disk drive? diskette drive would be more accurate, yer , I know they're floppy inside but original floppy disks were FLOPPY, not hard cased. So, the 5�" bendy, 'do not fold spindle or mutilate' disk came first, and the 3�" semi-hard, not so floppy disk came next.. Sounds a bit knobbist to me. :-)

[Pickle]

Answerbok - it's because they are still floppy! Try dismantling a diskette (take the metal bit off and pull apart the plastic cover) and inside you will find the floppy disk. That's where all the information is held, the plastic part is just for protection. Warning - once you've pulled a disk apart it's unusable!