🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Dec30.000429.24047@panix.com> schuster@panix.com (Michael Schuster) writes:

>I'd often wondered about the magnetic safety of mailing diskettes.
>Wondered how many diskettes that arrived unreadable were really
>due to exposure to magnetic fields during transit.

>Today in my mailbox was a post card from Pizza Hut. Taped to it was
>a magnetic sticker, suitable for posting on your refrigerator door,
>with the phone number of my local store.

>Good thing no software publisher was mass-mailing update diskettes
>this week, eh?

I also wondered how susceptible disks were to magnetic fields.  So I
took a disk, half filled with files, and exposed it to the field of a
strong horseshoe magnet (3 1/2" diskette).  While I could easily pick
the disk up by its metal gate I could not in any way corrupt the data
on the disk!  I suspect that data is much less vulnerable to static
magnetic fields than is commonly thought.  Alternating current
electromagnets/transformers etc. may be much more damaging but I conducted
no tests with alternating fields.
   jim...
charltn@ccu.umanitoba.ca