Floppy disks. Everyone has them, but nobody uses them anymore. It made me think that there has to be some way to use them to store secret data on the cheap.

I accidentally stumbled over the answer when I was dissecting a dead floppy drive. Here's what I found.

Step 1: Opening the Drive

Each floppy drive is held together by a combination of screws and clips.

Before you open it, you'll usually need to remove the front panel.

After the front panel is off, you need to remove the screws, then open it carefully not to bend the metal at the clips.

Step 2: Encrypting

Once the drive is open, you'll see two write heads. each one is attached to the drive by a flexible PCB (Printed Circuit Board).

You need to carefully remove each one from it's socket, and equally carefully plug each one into the other's socket.

Then, all that's left is closing it back up and plugging it in.

It will register standard floppy disks as unformatted, and once you format a disk with it, a regular drive will register that disk as unformatted.