# Disk swapping

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> Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_swapping
> Source revision: 1291458907
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{{short description |Swapping floppy disks in a computer}}
{{Use American English |date=February 2024}}
{{Use mdy dates |date=February 2024}}
{{More citations needed |date=February 2024}}
{{distinguish|Memory swapping}}
'''Disk swapping''' refers to the practice of inserting and removing, or swapping, [floppy disk](/source/floppy_disk)s in a [floppy disk drive](/source/Disk_storage)-based [computer](/source/computer) system. In the early days of [personal computer](/source/personal_computer)s, before [hard drives](/source/hard_disk_drive) became commonplace, most fully outfitted computer systems had two floppy drives (addressed as A: and B: on [MS-DOS](/source/MS-DOS),<ref name="rei22">{{cite web |last=Reimer |first=C.D. |date=2022-02-13 |title=A Short History of PC Drive Letters  |url=https://cdreimer.com/blog/a-short-history-of-pc-drive-letters/ |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220518073323/https://cdreimer.com/blog/a-short-history-of-pc-drive-letters/ |archive-date=May 18, 2022 |access-date=2024-02-14 |website=cdreimer.com}}</ref> and also on [CP/M](/source/CP%2FM){{snd}}other systems had different conventions). Disk drives were expensive, however, and having two was seen as a luxury by many computer users who had to make do with a single drive.

The purpose of two floppy drives was so that the disk containing the [application](/source/Application_software) program could remain in the drive while the data disk containing the user's files could be accessed in the second drive. Without a second drive, in order to use a function of the program not loaded into memory, the user would have to first remove the data disk, then insert the program disk. When the user then wanted to save their file, the reverse operation would have to be performed. On some less-than-[user-friendly](/source/Usability) systems, this could result in [data loss](/source/data_loss) when, for example, files were accidentally saved onto the program disk.

Disk swapping was an infamous feature of early [Macintosh 128K](/source/Macintosh_128K) systems, which were extremely [RAM](/source/Random-access_memory)-starved.

==References==
{{reflist}}

Category:Floppy disk computer storage

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Disk swapping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_swapping) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_swapping?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.