Caring for Diskettes and Diskette Drives

Follow these basic precautions to protect your diskettes and avoid losing data:

If you have a diskette that contains data you don’t want to accidentally write over or erase, be sure you write-protect it. This is especially important for your operating system and application program diskettes. See “Write-protecting Diskettes,” below, for more details.

Do not remove a diskette from the diskette drive or reset or turn off the computer while the drive light is on. This light indicates that the computer is copying data to or from a diskette. If you interrupt this process, you can destroy data.

Remove all diskettes before you turn off the computer.

Keep diskettes away from dust and dirt. Small particles of dust or dirt can scratch the magnetic surface, destroy data, and ruin the read/write heads in a diskette drive.

Never wipe, brush, or try to clean diskettes in any way.

Keep diskettes in a moderate environment. They work best at normal room temperature and in normal humidity. Don’t leave diskettes sitting in the sun, or in extreme cold or heat.

Keep diskettes away from magnetic fields. (Remember that diskettes store information magnetically.) There are many magnetic sources in your home or office, such as electrical appliances, telephones, and loudspeakers.

Do not place diskettes on top of your monitor or near an external hard disk drive.

Using Your Computer

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