What was a 5.25 Inch Floppy Disk? Detailed Review and 'Teardown'

The 5 1/4 inch floppy disk was the most popular mass storage media in the late 70's and throughout the 80's. All of the major computer manufacturers including IBM, Tandy/TRS-80, Commodore, Compaq, Apple and others provided them as options for their machines.

You've probably seen pictures of these things and maybe seen them in movies or or TV. So what were they?

In this video I take a detailed look at the humble floppy diskette and I even sacrifice one from my collection for the sake of science!

#floppydisk
#retrocomputer

[popcaent]

The last symbol means "do not use a pen to write on the label" as to not damage the media. Manufacturers recommended using a soft marker. I don't know anybody who managed to damage a floppy disk by using a pen to write on the label, though.

[bryannichols]

Good stuff! I remember when I got my floppy drive upgrade from the cassette recorder for my 64K CoCo. It was mail ordered from a Rainbow Magazine add and shipped to my duty station in Iceland in 1985. I learned a lot with that machine. Really wish I would have kept it! Thanks for the great TRS-80 content! Enjoying your channel.

[infinitygears]

You say familiar, but I showed one to someone at work the other week, and they didn't know what it was 😱

[borntoworkanddie]

Producers still use these to save audio and data from emu sp12 turbo machine with commodore64 drive.

[justincsloan]

That was pretty neato. Tried to explain why they were called "floppy" disks to my girlfriend

[drrobotnikmeanbeanma]

What's the name of the flexible plastic that's in the Floppy Disks ???

[Zankuho]

5:35 '.320' and '© 1986' indicate this as version 3.20

[QuasarRedshift]

Interesting to see the old stuff again . . . do you remember 8 inch disks? - what was their storage capacity ? - I don't remember . . . thx

[ibmpc]

Does that yellow disk work after that?

[osgeld]

good effort, but I am not the target audience since I am just about 40