Changes
3½" & 5¼" Floppy Disc Drives are not the Amstrad standard yet the media and drives were far cheaper so they were common especially when used as a 2nd drive.
Both 3½" & 5¼" drives were often double sided and supported double density and high densityalthough the Amstrad could only support Double Density.
Nowadays the 5¼" drives are hard to find and are expensive, media is not made anymore and new-old-stock media is also hard to find. The 3½" drives can be found from old PC computers and there is still a read supply of new-old-stock media. Increasingly however it's is often easier to use a disc drive emulator #or one of the devices that can run games from SD cards.
==Usage of Media==
To make full use of the capacity of the media you need to use another DOS or C/PM on your CPC which can support more tracks and two sides. Then you can use around 720KB per disc.
Without another DOS you can still use some of the capacity:
* 3½" discs can't be turned like 3" discs therefore with [[AMSDOS|AMSDOS]] you can use a manual side switch to choose the sides giving 2 x 178KB per side. Without the side switch it's just 178KB. Using discs like this back in the day was still useful as the media was cheaper.
* 5¼" discs can be turned over like a 3" and you can write both sides if you cut a write protect hole on the other sideof each disc OR like the 3½" a manual side switch can be used.
[[image:3.5.jpg|200px|thumb|Internal 3.5" drive]]
[[image:5,25_cable.jpg|200px|thumb|advertisement for 5,25" drive cable for CPC in 1990]]
==Scavenged 3½"==
It is worth noting that 3½" scavenged from PCs will lack the drive selection and ready signal. Often these drives will need a modification to make them useable OR you can make sure the drive motor is always on.
==Common PC Formats ==
== Beware : HD ==
Nowaday the most common 33½"1/2 disk is HD. These can be found as used or new old stock on auction sites.
But our beloved CPC can't understand easily the concept of High Density Disk with 1,44MB available... so you have to cheat to use the media: just put some opaque duct-tape (scotch-tape, whatever...) on the HD Hole.
Tada the drive will think DD media is used and now it's usable.
PC users used to do the opposite : file cut/drill a HD hole on DD disk...this worked well sometimes.
You can also modify your HD drive to behave as a DD one (but this would be permanent of course).. Check for appropriate jumpers on your drive!
