Editing Atari ST (section)

=== Floppy drive ===
{{Unreferenced section|date=December 2015}}
Atari initially used single-sided 3.5 inch floppy [[floppy disk|disk drives]] that could store up to 360&nbsp;KB. Later drives were double-sided and stored 720&nbsp;KB. Some commercial software, particularly games, shipped by default on single-sided disks, even supplying two 360&nbsp;KB floppies instead of a single double-sided one, to avoid alienating [[early adopter]]s.<ref>{{Cite web|title=XF35 Kit|url=https://www.atarimagazines.com/v8n5/XF35Kit.html|access-date=2021-09-06|website=www.atarimagazines.com}}</ref> 

Some software uses formats which allow the full disk to be read by double-sided drives but still lets single-sided drives access side A of the disk. Many magazine coverdisks (such as the first 30 issues of ''ST Format'') were designed this way, as were a few games. The music in ''[[Carrier Command]]'' and the intro sequence in ''[[Populous (video game)|Populous]]'' are not accessible to single-sided drives, for example. 

STs with double-sided drives can read disks formatted by [[MS-DOS]], but IBM PC compatibles can not read Atari disks because of differences in the layout of data on track 0.