LS-120 (120MB) SuperDisk Drives

The LS-120 drive (also called a SuperDisk drive) was designed to become the new standard floppy disk

drive in the PC industry, replacing the venerable 3 1/2'' 1.44MB floppy drive. Although it did achieve

a certain degree of success, Imation has ceased manufacturing of the drives but continues to produce

the drive media.

LS-120 technology stores 120MB of data—or about 83 times more data than current 1.44MB floppy

disks—and was developed by Imation; Compaq; Matsushita-Kotobuki Industries, Ltd. (MKE); and O.R.

Technology. In addition to storing more, the newest models of drives read at up to 27 times the speed

of standard floppy disk drives and write data up to 20 times faster than standard floppy disk drives

when LS-120/SuperDisk media is used. Figure 4 shows the media types that are compatible with the

LS-120 drive.

A standard 1.44MB 3 1/2'' floppy disk (left) compared to LS-120 SuperDisk media (right).

Note:-

SuperDisk drives can use either SuperDisks or standard 3 1/2'' floppies. Because the media sense hole and writeprotect/

enable slider are on opposite sides of the media, the SuperDisk is protected from damage if it is inserted into

an ordinary floppy drive by mistake.