COMPUTE! ISSUE 57 / FEBRUARY 1985 / PAGE 10
READERS' FEEDBACK
The Editors and
Readers of COMPUTE!
Do You Need Two Disk
Drives?
I have a TI-99/4A and an Amdek color monitor. I'm planning to buy a
second computer, but I'm confused about the advertising for two disk
drives. Why do you need two disk drives?
Natalia Macedo
For many home computer users, one
disk drive is sufficient. Two drives are, however, useful in several
ways. For example, if you do a lot of disk copying you won't have to
keep swapping the disks back and forth.
Some software
packages, particularly business programs, require two disk drives. An
example would be a data base manager which holds the program disk in
one drive and the data disk in the other. Similarly, if you do a lot of
programming, you can use two drives to hold your system disk and
utilities. Some compilers and assemblers also require or work much
faster with two drives.
Many writers
prefer dual-disk systems for word processing because they can
periodically save backups on separate disks for safety. In general you
can live with one and live very well with two.