Apple File Ware - Diskette

Diskette

The FileWare diskette has the same overall jacket dimensions of a normal 5¼ inch diskette, but because of the head arrangement, the jacket has non-standard cutouts for the heads, with two sets of cutouts on opposite sides of the spindle hole. The write enable sensor is also in a non-standard location, though most FileWare diskettes were produced without a write protect slot. The jacket had a corner cutout that keyed the diskette to prevent insertion in an incorrect orientation, and a rectangular hole that the drive could use to latch the diskette in place, preventing removal until the software allowed it.

FileWare drives used 62.5 tracks per inch rather than the standard 48 or 96 TPI, and used high flux density (comparable to the later IBM 1.2MB format introduced with the PC/AT). This required custom high-density media. The coercivity required is similar to that of the 1.2MB format, so it is possible to modify the jacket of 1.2MB diskettes for use in a FileWare drive.