Question hard disk protection

shadi shtaklef

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i have a transcend external hard disk. it was connected to my laptop and i was using the hard disk. my samsung tablet was next to the hard disk on the table for a few hours

as i know hard disks have magnetic shields thus my transcend external hard disk is ok and it wasnt affected by the tablet signal or whatever the tablet emits. am i correct?
 
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PC Tailor

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It takes a rather beefy magnet to destroy a HDD nowadays.
Your hard drive already has 2 strong magnets in it for the read/write heads movement. And it takes more than a simple every day magnet to disrupt this.

Many people have done some tests with bigger magnets and still not been able to destroy anything:
https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=hard-drive-destruction
https://archive.techarp.com/showarticle36a1.html?artno=84&pgno=5#myth-42

So magnetism from a tablet, I think will be negligible.
In the future though, if you're even unsure, the best way to find out, is by retesting the component.
 

shadi shtaklef

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you think or you know lol

if a very strong magnet couldnt damage a hard disk then of course a tablet cannot damage it. plus my external hard disk is transcend storejet and it has military grade protection and it can withstand shocks and not spoil thus it should be ok and nothing happened to it
 
you think or you know lol

if a very strong magnet couldnt damage a hard disk then of course a tablet cannot damage it. plus my external hard disk is transcend storejet and it has military grade protection and it can withstand shocks and not spoil thus it should be ok and nothing happened to it

Just like anything in the EMF spectrum, your field strength decreases with the square of the distance. 1, 1/4, 1/9, 1/16, 1/25 etc... That said EMF patterns from things like tablets are random. Generators/Motors/Magnets have poles our armatures that are unidirectional. Those are more likely to be sources of damage. But if you want to have some fun, put your cell phone on top of your clock radio speaker and give it a call. Right before your phone rings, you'll hear a Microwave burst frequency from the cell driving your clock radio speaker. So in that case, I wouldn't put your cell next to your HDD.

Your drive is much more likely to be damaged by being dropped, airborne contamination (Non-sealed drive), or radical changes in temperature which affects head calibration, (military enclosure or not.)
 

shadi shtaklef

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thus if something were to happen then it would have happened when the hard disk was near the tablet. if nothing happened then that means its fine and it wont spoil later on because of what happened?
 

PC Tailor

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thus if something were to happen then it would have happened when the hard disk was near the tablet. if nothing happened then that means its fine and it wont spoil later on because of what happened?
Correct - magnet damage to a HDD would likely be much more immediate rather than prolonged. Obviously magnetism can cause damage over time, but not in the manner you've encountered here, and again a tablet will barely touch a hard drive, nor disrupt it's function. You'd need something stronger than that to cause disruption to today's HDDs.
 

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but what about digitalgriffin's comment? he said that's bad if phone is next to hard disk
I would refer to my two earlier posts and more if you wish.

There are countless experiments which shows magnets in this way not causing an issue. And that it takes far more substantial magnetism to cause any damage or data loss.

HDD Magnet Experiment (KJ Magnetics)
Broadband Co HDD Magnet Experiment
Warped Perception Video HDD Magnet Test

And here is a simple one showing how magnets can cause damage, but they required a fish tank magnet the size of a brick:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2012/11/28/can-a-magnet-destroy-a-pc/#67359f647de0

And as digital griffin did say, you're much more likely to cause damage by dropping it, contamination, temperature, and even electrical surges for example.
 
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you think or you know lol

if a very strong magnet couldnt damage a hard disk then of course a tablet cannot damage it. plus my external hard disk is transcend storejet and it has military grade protection and it can withstand shocks and not spoil thus it should be ok and nothing happened to it

So why did you ask if you already knew? People store disks in all sorts of places, there are phones, other computers, tablets around them, there is memory storage in that tablet, there is a disk in computers. If just being around some electronic device caused damage to disks, almost none of them would work.