B drive

[ljbirns]

I am curious as to why no drive is named  B.  Why is that ?

Lew

[Josh]

B drive was used back in the days when people had multiple floppy disks. Back in those days, you would have both a 3.5 inch and a 5.25 inch floppy disk drive. Nowadays, its really not needed.

[app103]

I had a B drive on my P3 for a short time.

I had borrowed my father's external USB Super Floppy drive.

That letter is reserved, just like A, for floppy drives.

[ljbirns]

Ok  That make sense. I remember we bought a computer  a long  time ago and we insisted that they add a 3.5 " drive to go along with the 5.25 floppy. I forgot that it was the B drive.

Thanks

I knew I could count on getting the right answer from the collective expertise of our forum

Lew

[mouser]

even with one drive, my memory is you could use things like
"copy A:*.* B:"

and what would happen is, after it copied the files from the drive, you would be prompted to swap in a new floppy disk to complete the copy.  So it was a useful kludge for copying things between floppies.

[f0dder]

Yeah, that sounds right to me, mouser... DOS handled "B:" tweakily when you didn't have a second floppy drive. After harddrives appeared, there wasn't much advantage in having two floppy drives.

[Josh]

Are you kidding? Floppies have always had their place until the recordable cd became common place.