3½" & 5¼" Disk Drives

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Those Disk Drives are not the original Amstrad standard.

Yet they were far more cheap and are nowadays easier to use.


Especially the 3½" (3"1/2 ?) as those disk are still availlable in some retailers. You can also easily find such drives in any garbage if you properly scavenge old rusty computers.


Many Modern CPC users replace their old 3" by an external 3"1/2, adding a Disk drive A-B / B-A switcher.

Also a side switcher allows to use a 3"1/2 disk like a 3" disk...switching manually the sides (yet a decent sofware can do it).

A big advantage at the time was to get access to CP/M sofware library, as most of those were on such Disk.

Also, the Disk were fare cheaper than the exotic 3", but...few CPC users actually got such drives.

Softwares released on 3"1/2 disk

This pure awsomness even use a full DD disk with 720Ko, yet you have to get a DD disk Drive.

Non 3" CPC disk drives