udevrandom

It’s the actual raw magnetic field changes encoded in the platter.

It matters because lots of floppy setups had “anti copying” setups which played tricks on readers, or where degradation over time means the peaks and valleys of 1/0 can become less pronounced.

Thus getting at the core flux can help with retrieval and fixing

Flipping the cable would put the cables power display on the underside of your machine.

The little built-in screen on the cable is only on one side.

I was* a Mercury customer for >1 year, and their product really is excellent. It behaves reliably, has good features. After SVB they enhanced their existing deposit insurance to spread your money across more bank accounts, giving you effectively $5MM of insured deposit coverage. Setup was a snap with them too.

Generally, if Stripe etc claimed the money was on the way, Mercury's app already saw the funds and made them available by the time I received the Stripe email. Underneath the hood its Evolve Bank and Trust (or at least my bank account was).. Mercury is merely the smart software layer on top of the actual bank account they open on your behalf behind the scenes.

* The only slight negative is that they did terminate my account last week - they immediately suspended all in/out transactions with no warning, and said they'd either wire or cut me a check to get my balance out in a few weeks. I think it's because I asked their support a question about bringing one of our other much larger businesses across and so asked some ACH related questions which probably spooked them due to lack of understanding.

I'd use them again quite happily in other businesses though.. just be mindful if they do shut you down you might find yourself unbanked for a period of time... and the wire to get your funds out if they suspend you requires manual approval by someone in Mercury Compliance. The account in question is a SaaS for Franchisor Operations and Franchise Compliance, so we're usually considered quite low risk.. I regret losing my Mercury account, as the alternative (RelayFi) is 'good' but not as good unfortunately.