Ever since the data storage industry was taken over by the multitude of sleek storage drives that can hold a zillion gigabytes with ease, their poor cousin, the floppy disk, is almost extinct. Perhaps rightfully so – I remember losing my precious data a million times because of faulty diskettes. Also, the grinding and groaning noises the disks would make trying to read the data was enough to drive me into fits of frenzy.

But a revival of the floppy disk as a piece of forgotten art seems exciting – the USB Floppy Drive is a project concept by Thomas O'Connor to recycle old 1.44MB floppy disks and convert them into functional (good-looking) USB drives. The disk can be connected to a USB port and used as a normal pen drive. And every part of the floppy has been used well – the USB drive flips out of the disk at right angles, creating a stand to rest against, and the circular metal hub at the center becomes a power-cum-data-transfer indicator. Who would have thought that a floppy disk could look so important again? All we dare say is - this is a cool storage device waiting to happen.

Via DVICE.