Do we need both [floppy-disk] and [floppy-drive]?

Question

I think floppy-disk and floppy-drive have sufficiently intertwined scopes that there is little sense in distinguishing between them. Either a floppy disk or a floppy drive is useful primarily in the presence of the other, so posts mentioning either will often talk about both. More importantly, someone knowledgeable about either will be probably knowledgeable about both – so both tags signify basically the same area of expertise and interest. The distinction does not matter for the primary purpose of tags: I can’t imagine anyone would want to put floppy-disk in their watched tags, but floppy-drive in their ignored tags or vice versa.

Having two separate tags is also inconsistent with how we treat other removable media:

• cd-rom covers both disks and drives in the tag description;
• cassette-tape nominally refers to the media, but some questions are actually about the drives, like Reviving the Cassette Port on an XT Clone Motherboard or Upping the speed of the VIC-20 tape drive: aftermarket hardware for the expansion port with "rabbit" in the name?;
  • likewise the near-duplicate magnetic-tape, which has Which tape drives were the last to offer backward compatibility with QIC-150 Tape Cartridges?;
• game-cartridge has no corresponding “drive” tag either; although one could argue that this is because there is not really a drive there to speak of, we do have questions more about the slot interface than the cartridges themselves, like Commodore 64 - any way to safely plug in a cartridge when the power is on? or What causes the glitchy sound when a GBA cartridge is removed?.

If other formats can manage with just one tag for both drives and media, why can’t floppies?

I have no strong opinion on what the merged tag should be, so feel free to write an answer with your proposal – or one opposing the merge entirely.

Answer 1

Questions tagged floppy-disk - 217

Questions tagged floppy-drive - 91

With both of the above - 40

Questions tagged floppy - 4

Given that more than a half of the questions about floppy drives is specifically about floppy drives but not disks, both floppy-disk and floppy-drive likely ought to remain. However, floppy must go.

Answer 2

The floppy disk and the floppy drive are two separate concepts.

The disk itself is a removable data storage medium, and the drive is an electromechanical device which interfaces between electrical control signals and the storage medium to actually access the data.

I can easily imagine questions that are only relating to the floppy disk as a medium (like how is data stored or encoded on the disk as per some protocol for the data stream) and questions that only relate to the disk drive itself (like what kind of electronic signals are used to control the drive in order to seek to a track).

I don't see any reason to have just one tag meaning both the disk and the drive.

Which also means for the other media like tapes or CD, the question cannot be tagged with similar precision about the media itsel or the device to access the media. As there are no separate tags, so the questions use only one tag that is close enough.