YouTuber revisits a long-retired storage icon
Floppy disks were officially deemed obsolete in 2010, yet persisted in surprising places for years
Polymatt used CNC machining and PET film to craft a functioning magnetic storage disk
Iron oxide coating allowed the handmade disk to store and retrieve basic magnetic data
Floppy disks, once a staple of personal and professional computing, have been phased out for over a decade — but while the technology was officially declared obsolete in 2010, some organizations kept using it surprisingly long.
The Japanese government only moved away from the format in 2024, while the German Navy followed suit the same year. In the United States, the last official use of 8-inch floppy disks for nuclear launch coordination ended in 2019, with San Franciso’s government also finally cutting ties with floppies in 2024.
Against this backdrop of obsolescence, a YouTuber known as polymatt decided to recreate one from scratch, using modern tools and consumer-grade equipment.
