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Thread: Magnets

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    lazy student nvening's Avatar
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    Magnets

    I keep hearing references to magnets being bad to PCs, like putting them on ur PC makes it not work? Is this true and if so should i be worried? (by magnets)
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    magnets will destroy/corrupt all of the data on your hard disk and any floppy disks. They need to be either quite strong or quite close to the disk to affect them.

    I suspect they would affect the stability of high frequency signals for the memory etc as well but this won't matter if the PC can't read fro the disk.

    HT

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    Senior Amoeba iranu's Avatar
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    Errm - do you have magnets next to your pc? The only thing I can think of is speakers, but these should be shielded.

    Anything electrical will be affected by magnets. Electrons can be made to change directions using a magnet (see tv, electron microscope). Anything that writes data like hard drive or tape recorder will be affected too.

    To keep it short and simple unless you have cash to burn. DON'T PUT MAGNETS NEXT TO YOUR PC
    "Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.

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    YUKIKAZE arthurleung's Avatar
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    The casing of the harddrive will shield the platters unless the magnet is extremely strong. (But I bet no one going to put a MRI scanner next to their computer?_
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    Unless the magnent is extremely strong, you probably have nothing to worry about.

    I've seen a 150 pound pull rare earth magnent (strong enough to distort the image on a monitor from a meter away) stuck to the side of a computer with no ill effect.

    Floppies and tapes (if anyone uses them) are, in my experience, alot easier to harm with magnents than hardrives and other components.

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    Senior Member sawyen's Avatar
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    I use magnets to hang my case fans around odd angles in my very stuffy case.. nothing bad came around both my maxtors..
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    nothing to worry about, old wives tale along the same line as hairs on the palm of your hand fnaar fnaar Have you ever tried to seperate the magnets that are fitted inside your hard drive??????????????????? If not, find an old harddrive, prise it open and take the 2 magnets out and you'll be astounded...but don't put them near a floppy disk!

  8. #8
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    do magnets affect TFTs the same as the funky effect you get from a CRT?

    a good strong degaus should clear a crt monitor anywho

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    Quote Originally Posted by killie99
    nothing to worry about, old wives tale along the same line as hairs on the palm of your hand fnaar fnaar Have you ever tried to seperate the magnets that are fitted inside your hard drive??????????????????? If not, find an old harddrive, prise it open and take the 2 magnets out and you'll be astounded...but don't put them near a floppy disk!
    Where ? Opened alot but never noticed. Any screenie to show me
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    the magnets are used to move the actuator arm. Look at the end of the actuator (head reading assembly) that doesn't have the heads - the magets are above and below. Look at this page, the magnets are the shiny curved bits bottom left (technically thery're not, the magnets are glued onto the shiny bits!)

    http://www.absoluteinsight.net/67

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