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.