Disk Pack - Disk Cartridge

An early disk cartridge was a single hard disk platter encased in a protective plastic shell. When the removable cartridge was inserted into the cartridge drive peripheral device, the read/write heads of the drive could access the magnetic data storage surface of the platter through holes in the shell. The disk cartridge was a direct evolution from the disk pack drive, or the early hard drive. As the storage density improved, even a single platter would provide a useful amount of data storage space, with the benefit being easier to handle than a removable disk pack. An example of a cartridge drive is the IBM 2310, used on the IBM 1130. Disk cartridges were made obsolete by floppy disks.