What’s so floppy about floppy disks?

Question

While reading through Etymology of the use of "Drive" to refer to a digital storage medium and its various mentions of floppy disks, it occurred to me that, while drive is in origin a reasonably good and logical word to use for digital storage media, floppy isn’t really a very apt adjective to describe thin, magnetic disks encased in flexible plastic cases.

I understand (or I suppose I should say assume) the reason these were described with an adjective in that general ballpark is that they are in general quite a bit softer than their contemporary counterparts: not only is the magnetic disk itself so thin that it is easily bendable, the plastic case itself (especially the 8” ones) is also not very rigid and can easily be bent and broken.

What I don’t understand is why floppy in particular was chosen.

I’m just about young enough that I’ve only ever practically worked with 3 ½” floppy disks myself, but I have handled (and disassembled) a few of the old 8” disks that Wikipedia says were the first of their kind, and while it’s true that the magnetic disk is softish and easy to bend, on the admittedly few occasions where I’ve taken them apart, even the disk inside was still rigid enough that I would never describe it as floppy. If you hold it out horizontally, it may bend down a good deal just from gravity, but it doesn’t just flap and flop around like truly floppy objects like a crocheted doily or a piece of paper would.

Considering the wealth of descriptive adjectives in English, why did the developers of the early floppy disks (or whoever first thought up the name) choose the particular adjective floppy to describe them, rather than one of the many arguably more accurate adjectives like soft, pliant, bendy/bendable, etc.? Were early, pre-release versions of the magnetic disks perhaps made from an even softer material that did in fact flop loosely about, rather than just bending easily? Or was someone not very big on semantic distinctions and just liked the word ‘floppy’?

What’s so specifically floppy about floppy disks?

Bookeater · Answer

There are 3 origins to choose from. None of the references look very solid.

The 5.25-inch disks were dubbed "floppy" because the diskette packaging was a very flexible plastic envelope, unlike the rigid case used to hold today's 3.5-inch diskettes.

References:
http://www.answers.com/Q/Why_is_a_floppy_disk_called_floppy
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/floppy-disk-drive1.htm

floppy disk (named so because they were flexible)

Reference from obsolete website royal.pingdom.com

Origin of floppy disk:
in contrast to a hard disk, which is rigid

Reference:
http://www.yourdictionary.com/floppy-disk
In the end this article from IBM suggests the term originates from the flexibility of the medium, but it is never stated outright.

The team considered using magnetic tape first, but then, in a project code-named “Minnow,” they switched to using a flexible Mylar disk coated with magnetic material that could be inserted through a slot into a disk drive mechanism and spun on a spindle. “I had no idea how important it would become and how widespread,” recalls Warren L. Dalziel, the lead inventor of the floppy disk drive.
The first floppies were 8-inch disks that were bare, but they got dirty easily, so the team packaged them in slim but durable envelopes equipped with an innovative dust-wiping element, making it possible to handle and store them easily.

Reference:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/floppy/

Carolyn · Answer

If you were anything like me and my uni friends, you would understand the term “floppy”... We pulled one apart to see what it was like inside when they first came out. 
We were young and immature enough to not just hold them and let them “bend”, we suspended them in our fingertips and shook them about like 3 year olds. The term “Floppy” was certainly appropriate!
And when you consider the rigid disks called “records” that we all used to play our music, “floppy” was a novel term that caught on right away.

Ray Butterworth · Answer

Magnetic disks were traditionally made of cast aluminum, and were very hard and rigid (the same as the "hard drives" that one can still buy today, but much much larger).  Think of circular saw blades without teeth.

In contrast, floppy disks were made of very thin plastic, which if held at the edge would bend under their own weight.

In use, they were kept flat by the force generated by their spinning.

For anyone familiar with standard hard drive disks, taking one out of its protective case revealed something so different from the precision machined aluminum platters, that they could hardly call them anything but "floppy".
(Well, "flimsy" might have worked too, but that would also have implied unreliability.)

What’s so floppy about floppy disks?

What’s so specifically floppy about floppy disks?

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