- Floppy -Disks were officially considered outdated in 2010, yet lasted in surprising places for years
- Polymatte used CNC processing and pet film to create a functioning magnetic storage disk
- Iron oxide coating enabled the handmade disk to store and retrieve basic magnetic data
Floppy disks, when a staple of personal and professional computing, has been phased out for over a decade – but while the technology was officially declared outdated in 2010, some organizations used it surprisingly long.
The Japanese government only moved away from the format in 2024, while the German navy followed the same year. In the United States, the last official use of 8-inch diskes for nuclear launch coordination ended in 2019, when the San Franciso government is also finally cutting bonds with floats in 2024.
On this basis of obsolescence, a YouTuber known as Polymatt decided to recreate one from scratch using modern tools and equipment for consumer quality.
Engineering a work disk from scratch
Polymatt began the project by carefully measuring and modeling the disk ink cap and internal components using Shapr3D and Makeracam software.
Then he cut aluminum parts with a carvera air CNC machine, ensuring precise tolerances for the mechanical structure.
For the magnetic disk surface laser -cut pet film and coated it with a suspension of iron oxide powder, which repeats the material properties needed for magnetic data storage.
After gathering the components, he managed to magnetize the disk and write to it.
While the data processing features were fundamental, the fact that a functioning magnetic storage medium emerged from raw materials, a remarkable technical performance.
The process was not without difficulty, but the persistence and methodological experimentation enabled him to end the building.
Today, cloud storage services allow huge amounts of data to access anywhere without the physical limitations of older media.
SSDs provide high -speed storage in compact formats, while an external SSD offers portable capacity well above what was once possible with floppy disks.
A single modern SSD can store millions of times more data than the recreated floppy velocity with speeds that make the older medium appear impractical slow for comparison.
While Polymatt’s recreation is likely to be used in practical uses, it demonstrates the sustained appeal of practical engineering projects.
Building a floppy disk in 2025 serves more as a tribute to a central era in computing than as a viable alternative to current storage methods.
For those who once depended on them, the well -known clunk of a floppy reading data is part of a technological heritage that formed modern computing.
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