While hole punchers and opaque tape worked for notching and denotching, there were also floppy notchers. It turns out these bits of accessories are rarely found on secondary markets or go for something like $80 USD. There are still quite a few 5.25" drive cleaning kits still for sale.
I don't miss floppies because they were slow, fragile, and prone to developing unrecoverable errors. I did discover through experimentation that 3.5" floppies were fairly resistant to crude direct magenetic attack. I had to open the window and touch the media surface to a small speaker's magnet to induce errors. Praise be to the greaseweazle and the Copy II PC Deluxe Option Board 2.0 (the 1.0 doesn't support 3.5" 1.44 MB).
2.88 MB drives are worth a small fortune because they are still used for industrial purposes. Also, SCSI floppy drives exist.
While hole punchers and opaque tape worked for notching and denotching, there were also floppy notchers. It turns out these bits of accessories are rarely found on secondary markets or go for something like $80 USD. There are still quite a few 5.25" drive cleaning kits still for sale.
I don't miss floppies because they were slow, fragile, and prone to developing unrecoverable errors. I did discover through experimentation that 3.5" floppies were fairly resistant to crude direct magenetic attack. I had to open the window and touch the media surface to a small speaker's magnet to induce errors. Praise be to the greaseweazle and the Copy II PC Deluxe Option Board 2.0 (the 1.0 doesn't support 3.5" 1.44 MB).
2.88 MB drives are worth a small fortune because they are still used for industrial purposes. Also, SCSI floppy drives exist.