The floppy disk drive reads and writes data to |floppy diskettes|. The drive may be internal, fitting in a system drive bay, or external, housed in its own small case and connected to the system by a |cable|. The drive uses |read-write heads| to recognize and manipulate magnetic data on the media. Floppy disks are used to import new |software| into the system and to export data for archival or transport.
Floppy drives support two standard sizes of floppy disks, |3 1/2"| and |5 1/4"|, and systems often feature both. |Laptops| and |notebooks| typically use 3 1/2" drives because of their smaller size and the greater capacity of the disks.
