A soft magnetic disk. It is called floppy because it flops if you wave it (at least, the 5¼-inch variety does). Unlike most hard disks, floppy disks (often called floppies or diskettes) are portable, because you can remove them from a disk drive. Disk drives for floppy disks are called floppy drives. Floppy disks are slower to access than hard disks and have less storage capacity, but they are much less expensive. And most importantly, they are portable.
Floppies come in three basic sizes:
PC Guide's floppy disk drive reference Covers the construction and operation of the drive, different sizes, media types and formats, logical structures, and interfacing and configuration.
Troubleshooting Floppy Disk Drives Discusses troubleshooting problems related to the floppy disk drive. This page is from "The PC Guide."
