The myth of the Magnets

[BongWizard]

oh LSD you sly devil! lol yeah it probably would!

[Lsdmeasap]

Go on now, test it out! I would but I dont have a magnet on hand!

[Aguiluz]

Originally Posted by Lsdmeasap

Likely will work very nicely with a decent magnet and your buddies USB drive though

Wait, do you mean that even flash drives can be magnetically damaged?

[Lsdmeasap]

Yeap, sure can if the magnet is strong enough

[artdrivers]

Well now lets all try an experiment! Find the largest magnet you have. Mine is on the refrigerator and run it across a floppy disk you are not concerned with, (like one of them old AOL disks) Now pop it in and read the data off of it. Answer solved. If we can solve so many problems then why do we lose so many Nanoseconds?

[Ronski]

Originally Posted by Technogeek

Just as Kheldar said, I know this to be true. I have destroyed a HDD with a magnet, and not a hugh one. Yes it was on, and It was for a test in one of my computer classes. The teacher asked us this very same question, so we deiced to try it. We held the magnet to the HDD when the computer was off, and when it was on. When it was off, nothing occured, but when it was on, the hard drive became corrupt, and had errors all though it. It would not work, and could not be repaired. It did make some noise when we stuck that magent next to it.

Reading the above implies that the magnet caused the head to move and thus contact the platters causing damage, rather than altering the contents of the disc via magnetism directly.

Hmmm, I have an old laptop drive which is already playing up, perhaps one day I'll try it

[jaggerwild]

A magnet will also hurt to a CRT display, it would have to be big enough. But the potential is there.