As were the 8" hard sectored diskettes. Don't forget the write-protect notch.
And don't forget you can notch each side for double the storage!
```just a word of warning, copy everything off them [commercially-available flippable 5.25" BBC Micro disks] quick, as the 'side2' goes backwards to the cotton cloth cleaner inside the 5 1/4" case, so basically all the crap caught in it then end up coming out when playing other flip side :('''
(No idea how common this phenomenon might have been! - I've always had double-sided drives, so I've always used the other side of the disk in the normal fashion.)
I have taken the floppy out of the sleeves to dry them out as the entirety of my collection fell in the aquarium.
Writable == tape
Find me someone who used 5.25 who didn’t do this and I’ll fight you.
Then there were things like fdformat ... because software had a very close relationship with the hardware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_(DOS)
These machines ran off a program that was stored on 8" floppies. All the workers had been told to NEVER EVER touch the floppies. Well one night, a disk went bad and had to be replaced. To the horror of the operator, my boss ripped the magnetic media out through the spindle hole, looked at it closely, and proclaimed "Yep. It's bad"