Those disk drive cardboard transit protectors

[Alex Eisenhut]

Floppy drives, at least 5.25", almost always came with a disk-shaped piece of cardboard inside the drive, labelled "transit protector".

I always thought this makes sense because if you have a double-sided drive with two r/w heads facing each other, the heads can crack like that old toy Clackers if there's a sharp enough shock.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clackers

OK, fine, so why would you need that for a single-sided drive?

And why did I never see one for a 3.5" drive? Even though they do exist.

[David Hess]

And why did I never see one for a 3.5" drive? Even though they do exist.

3.5 inch drives have to unload the heads when no disk is inserted, so they are protected.  5.25 inch drives relied on a manual release mechanism which could have been left in either position when shipping.

[xmris]

The only one for 3.5" I ve seen so far was for the Commodore 1581 drive, it was a yellow plastic in the shape of a floppy, not that make any difference, there is no way for the heads of the 3.5" to come in contact like some 5.25"s -main older models like the 1541 from C= again, back in time we used custom "transit cards" or converted 5.25" floppies instead the 'official' ones.

[helius]

You're right that the main reason for the transit protectors is to prevent the two heads in a double-sided drive from slapping against each other. On a single sided drive the head is opposite a fabric or foam pad (which could still damage the head if it is decayed from age and flakes off and sticks to the head). There is a problem with using cardboard on 3.5" drives though: because the drive is designed to "pull down" on the hard plastic microfloppy when it is inserted, a cardboard insert would get stuck and possibly torn. I have seen plastic transit protectors on some 3.5" drives in laptop computers (Toshiba I think), which serve the same purpose, but are compatible with the microfloppy loading arrangement.