Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Feed Link: https://www.engadget.com/
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Title: YouTuber recreates a floppy disk from scratch

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2025 18:30:45 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/youtub...

There's nothing quite like the drive to build something just to see if you
can. YouTuber polymatt set out to create a floppy disk drive, the favored
storage medium of yesteryear, from scratch, because why not. For anyone born
too late to have regularly used one, a floppy disk is a magnetically coated,
flexible polyester disk encased in a protective shell. Insert it into a
floppy drive, and a magnetic head reads or writes data on the disk. If you've
ever wondered why the "save" icon looks the way it does, it's based on the
shape of a floppy disk.

To start, polymatt measured and recreated the disk enclosure and other pieces
in Shapr3D and MakeraCAM, then cut the aluminum pieces on a Carvera Air CNC
machine. The magnetic disk itself was made by laser-cutting a piece of PET
film and coating it with a suspension of iron oxide powder. After assembling
all the components and a few touch-and-go moments, he was actually able to
magnetize the floppy disk and write to it, albeit at a very basic level.

We declared the floppy disk dead in 2010, and in the years since then even
those that clung on the longest have abandoned it. The Japanese government
finally said goodbye to the floppy disk in 2024, and the German Navy moved on
from the format in the same year. The US government only just stopped using 8-
inch floppy disks to coordinate the launch of nukes in 2019.

Polymatt's project was a wonderful dive into nostalgic tech and engineering
prowess. Maybe next time he can make a compact disc from scratch.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/youtub...
disk-from-scratch-183045582.html?src=rss

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