(Computers) An electronic storage medium which may either be built into a computer (a hard disk), or may be a removable medium (a floppy disk, etc.); SYN. hard disk, floppy disk.
1. A round, flat piece of flexible plastic coated with a magnetic material that can be electrically influenced to hold information recorded in digital (binary) form and encased in a protective plastic jacket to protect the disk from damage and contamination. Also called: floppy, floppy disk, microfloppy disk. Compare compact disc, disc.
2. See hard drive.
In computing, a common medium for storing large volumes of data (an alternative is magnetic tape.) A magnetic disk is rotated at high speed in a disk-drive unit as a read/write (playback or record) head passes over its surfaces to record or “read” the magnetic variations that encode the data. There are several types, including floppy discs, hard discs, and CD-ROM.
Fixed disks provide the most storage. Up to 600 megabytes (million bytes) is quite common, although the hard disks of this type used with microcomputers may hold only 10 or 20 megabytes. Fixed or hard disks are built into the drive unit, occasionally stacked one on top of another. Removable disks are common in minicomputer systems, hold about 80 megabytes of data, and are contained in a rigid plastic case that can be taken out of the drive unit. A floppy disk (also called diskette) is very much smaller in size and capacity. Normally holding less than 1 megabyte of data, it is flexible, mounted in a card envelope or rigid plastic case, and can be removed from the drive unit. Recently, laser disks and compact disks have been used to store computer data. These have an enormous capacity (about 600 megabytes on a compact disk and billions of bytes on a laser disk) but, once written onto the disk, data cannot be erased. + prikaži više

See floppy disk.
A small plastic magnetic disk enclosed in a stiff envelope with a radial slit; used to store data or programs for a microcomputer; SYN. floppy disk.

A round piece of flexible plastic film coated with ferric oxide particles that can hold a magnetic field. When placed inside a disk drive, the floppy disk rotates to bring different areas, or sectors, of the disk surface under the drive’s read/write head, which can detect and alter the orientation of the particles’ magnetic fields to represent binary 1s and 0s. A floppy disk 5.25 inches in diameter is encased in a flexible plastic jacket and has a large hole in the center, which fits around a spindle in the disk drive; such a disk can hold from a few hundred thousand to over one million bytes of data. A 3.5-inch disk encased in rigid plastic is also called a floppy disk or a microfloppy disk. In addition, 8-inch floppy disks were common in DEC and other minicomputer systems. See also microfloppy disk.
A small, flexible disk carrying a magnetic medium in which digital data is stored for later retrieval and use.
In computing, a storage device consisting of a light, flexible disk enclosed in a cardboard or plastic jacket. The disk is placed in a disk drive, where it rotates at high speed. Data are recorded magnetically on one or both surfaces.
Floppy disks were invented by IBM in 1971 as a means of loading programs into the computer. They were originally 8 in/20 cm in diameter and typically held about 240 kilobytes of data. Present-day floppy disks, widely used on microcomputers, are usually either 5.25 in/13.13 cm or 3.5 in/8.8 cm in diameter, and generally hold 0.5–2 megabytes, depending on the disk size, recording method, and whether one or both sides are used. + prikaži više

The physical material, such as paper, disk, and tape, used for storing computer-based information. Media is plural; medium is singular.
(computing) (singular medium) In computing, the collective name for materials on which data can be recorded. For example, paper is a medium that can be used to record printed data; a floppy disc is a medium for recording magnetic data. + prikaži više