Abstract: A disk drive that can read from and write to both standard floppy disks and high capacity floppy disks. The present invention provides a single slot disk drive that can accept both standard floppy disks and high capacity floppy disks. After a floppy disk is inserted, physical cues on the floppy disk are used to inform the disk drive as to the nature (standard or high capacity) of the inserted disk. The disk drive incorporates two interfaces, a standard floppy disk controller and an IDE interface for high capacity disks. The disk drive is configured so that both interfaces can communicate with a host computer at all times, regardless of what type of disk is inserted in the disk drive. This allows the host computer to operate as if it had two separate disk drives available.