Magnets .. a lot of fun but pretty harmless, or are they ??
Could it be possible for this small bar of metal to wipe the memory of your computer ?? Destroying your life's work ??
The theory is, that if you leave your laptop near a sufficiently big magnet, it'll erase or scramble everything of its hard drive.
To understand how could this happen, we need to go back to basics.
Could it be possible for this small bar of metal to wipe the memory of your computer ?? Destroying your life's work ??
The theory is, that if you leave your laptop near a sufficiently big magnet, it'll erase or scramble everything of its hard drive.
To understand how could this happen, we need to go back to basics.
Well, hadr drive stores information magnetically as it works in a similar way to childhood experiment of magnet ( observing how magnets change the direction of Iron filings).
The hard drive disc is coated with a magnetically sensitive material that can be reorientated by the read-write head inside, to form new patterns to describe information.
This information can be added to or deleted, in the form of programs, text and images.
So, it's acceptable to internal magnetic source to be affected by external one but just how powerful does the magnet have to be !
* Kid's magnets ( toys ) : they rattle together, noisy but not very powerful. The question is : would they bother your laptop ?
Well, NO they're obviously weak.
* Big magnet - three times powerful than the toys - that can pick up several hundreds of paper clips without a sweat. So would it affect your laptop ?Well, NO it's not that powerful !
* Now, by wrapping a coil of wire around the magnet and passing a current through it, you create more powerful electromagnet, approximately 30% stronger than before. Would it destroy your laptop ?Well, the answer still NO !!
* Imagine that your laptop exposed to a massive electromagnet, the type used to pick up cars in junk yards .. ( although it is only twice as powerful as our home made electromagnet ) but it applies this force among much larger area, and after 22 seconds of exposure to this force .. Will it survive ??
No,your laptop would be dead ;) ;)
By scrambling every particle of the surface of the disc, the big magnet had instantly wiped out every operating program and every file stored in your computer. Their was Literally no information left for it to read. But it had taken some very extreme measures to achieve it.
So, it seems that your magnetic data is safe from every day life. Just be sure to avoid any giant electromagnets. ;) ;)
