Why “C” is the Default Drive on Your Computer (Instead of A or B)

Have you ever wondered why the names of hard drives start from “C”? Where have the A and B drives gone?

Here’s the answer:

Hard disk drives have been standard since 1980

Before hard disk drives, Floppy disk drives were used as data storage devices

Floppy disks came into existence in the 1960’s

Floppy disks came in two sizes 5 1/4 ” and 3 1/2″

Those two floppy disk drives were labelled as Local Disk “A” and Local Disk “B”

Hard disk drives augmented and then replaced the floppy disks, hence the letter “C” was used

By the way, after the invention of the Hard disk, a Floppy disk of size 8 inch came into existence

~cybrary

Down the memory lane when i use to play games like Dave, Mario and Prince of Persia on floppy drive. We have to even format a hard disk(C) with a floppy drive(A) before you can install windows 98,2000,XP. Many seems to have forgotten the important role floppy dick have played... . Am happy it retained (A) even doe its not in use today. Great topic i must admit.

Yeah...it's very serious. 1.4MB for a game. Super Mario. You just copy and play. No long things...no installation. Those were the good old days. Today's ipad kids would have no idea.