Method and apparatus for distinguishing between diskettes in a diskette drive

摘要

A method and apparatus are disclosed for enabling a diskette drive system to distinguish between diskettes and verify that the diskette currently in the drive is the correct one. Each diskette contains a file allocation table for controlling the allocation and deallocation of storage space on the diskette. Each time that the file allocation table on a diskette is accessed, i.e., read or written, a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) value for the file allocation table is calculated and stored. When checking the validity of a diskette, i.e., that the correct diskette is in the drive, a CRC value for the file allocation table of the currently loaded diskette is calculated and compared to the most recently stored CRC value. If the most recently calculated CRC value does not match the most recently stored CRC value, then this is an indication that the wrong diskette is currently in the diskette drive. A warning is then provided to the system user to change diskettes before a read or a write operation will be commenced.