2006-09-01 11:28:20 · 16 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
Once upon a time, long long ago, on an operating system far far away (try early 70's and MS-DOS) computers did not have hard drives. They had two floppy drives. One for running the program, the other for saving data. They were the "A" and "B" drive.
When the hard drive was invented, it was attached to the system board by a different cable, on a different type of controller. So it was assigned as the "C" drive. Everything after that was D,E,F, etc.
If you were to add a second floppy drive to you PC, it would be the "B" drive. They just never bothered to re-write DOS and Windows to get that letter back again.
2006-09-01 11:31:05 · answer #1 · answered by dewcoons 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
A B: drive would be a second floppy drive. While this was pretty common back in the early '90s, today's computers often don't even have ONE floppy drive let alone two.
Allowing for two floppy drives let you have both a 5 1/4" and a 3 1/2" drive, back in the days when such a configuration was actually useful.
2006-09-01 11:31:23 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
In the old days, the A and B drives were configured to be connected to a dual floppy disk drive port. That old fashioned legacy hardware still exists on nearly all motherboards. These are permanently reserved hardware addresses, so that someday, you could add two floppy disk drives to your computer.
Yeah, right, like I'd really want a floppy disk drive at this point Let's move into the future. Someday, someone will ask why there is no A drive or B drive.... same answer.
2006-09-01 11:32:29 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Computers DO have a "B:" drive, even if they dont.
go start --->run and in the box type "command"
in the box that opens type "b:" (this will move to the "b:" drive) if you have two floppy drives, it will activate the second drive. if you dont it will ask you to put a disk in drive a that you would like to use as drive b.
type "copy A:\*.* B:" to copy the contents of one disk to another, for example.
My Lappy has drive letters A -->m(o) depending on whut(micro$oft) operating system i'm in.
Unix based operating systems use a much more sensible drive identification system ie "ad0s2" = fixed disk 0, partition 2.
The "B" drive is NOT a 5¼" disk, it can be. it could be 2.5" disk. it could be a ZIP/JAZZ disk. it could be a virtual drive. it is whatever is connected(or not) to the other end of the cable.
2006-09-01 12:01:54 · answer #4 · answered by z3b3rd33 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Back in the early 90's when I started to tinker and work with computers the first floppy drives, which you used a 5.25" drive, and they used 720 or 360 mg disks, that technology was basically all they had for storage in those days, harddrives were in the range of 40-200 mg, so if you had a network and were working with the early Raid systems, it was quite a tussle to have 100-200 drives to work off of.
We take for granted that in les that 15 years were have gone from a X386, with a 40 mg HD, 16 mg of ram, 1 mg video card, and buzzer for sound, to the high end units of today.
2006-09-01 11:53:42 · answer #5 · answered by The Unknown Chef 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They used to have them but they don't anymore. The disk for the B drive was big and........well.....floppy. They held less then the current floppy drives which will hopefully be phased out by motherboard manufacturers (it is used so you can 'flash the BIOS'). They were on the old 386 and 486 computers. Since they have been elminated, there is no B drive..........now I feel old for being able to remember B drives while you thought they never existed...
2006-09-01 11:38:43 · answer #6 · answered by nighthawk_842003 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Back in the stone age, the B drive was a 5 and a quarter drive. The name floppy disk came from this device because the disk were floppy.
2006-09-01 11:36:42 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Stick a second floppy drive in there and you have a B drive. I had one in a computer not too long ago. I painted my computer and never put back in a second floppy.
2006-09-01 12:11:17 · answer #8 · answered by ne_plus_ultra_1 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
B drive you could say its the mother board.
The first Floppy Drive that u get is A Drive the second is called a D Drive.
2006-09-01 11:35:20 · answer #9 · answered by flaco 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You can change the drive letters in Windows. But generally the hard drive deafults to C: and other hard drives or partitons go from there D:, E: etc. They use to use B: for floppy drives in previous years.
2006-09-01 11:33:45 · answer #10 · answered by abudall 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋