There is a saying... If a magnet touches a floppy... All data is gone. Well, let's see if that's true. For this experiment, I'll be using 3.5" High
Density floppy disks. Much like these two. I'll also use a couple of different magnets,
starting with this one, a Alnico horseshoe magnet with a 1KG pull. That means this magnet requires 1KG of force
to pull away from a flat steel surface. To test whether this magnet will affect data
on a disk, I'll have to put data on this disk, but first I'll need to format it. Given the age of these floppies, some have
deteriorated, so finding a disk which formats without any bad sectors was quite tricky. But after sorting through various contenders,
I found 3 which were suitable. For the purposes of this test, I'll be using
3 disks, one labelled Larry, one Barry and one Gary. The first disk, Larry, I'll fill with images. This collection of wallpapers from the Windows
98 directory will do just fine, each one can be previewed and indeed opened. To fully verify the disk's integrity I'll
also run a scan disk, which reveals there are now 805,376 bytes in 20 files, leaving
652,288 available. Disk Barry will have something a little different... ZIP files. Now I don't know about you, but whenever I
had corrupted disks in the 90s, it always used to be slap bang in the middle of a ZIP
file. Usually this meant whatever games I'd copied
from my mate's computer, wouldn't load on mine. So here we have PAP.ZIP and CAR.ZIP. Both of these ZIP files work perfectly, with
PAP being Paperboy 2 and CAR being Grand Prix Circuit, and although it doesn't appreciate
running through the Windows 98 command, prompt, it still loads. Disk Gary, I'm just going to leave totally
blank. So, what am I trying to do with these tests? Well, data is stored onto a thin piece of
magnetic coated plastic in the floppy. An energised write head can then orientates
the north and south poles of tiny - often iron - particles embedded on this surface,
in order to create a readable pattern the computer can interpret. By putting a magnet in close proximity to
these particles, we can literally disorientate this pattern and corrupt the data. Legend tells us this is possible, even with
quite a weak magnet, or even if you place your disks too close to your monitor, but
I've put my disks through some pretty rough times before, and mostly, they've been just
fine. Really, I just want to know how much magnetism
the data can withstand, before it goes bye bye. So, in a very unscientific manner, I'll start
with Larry, and just circle the magnet around the disk, without making physical contact. Next I'll pop the disk back in the drive,
and see if the data is intact... and yes, indeed, it's all there, everything is readable. Time to move this up a notch.. this time,
I'll make direct contact with the disk, and try again. Surprisingly, again, everything checks out
just fine. OK, so to do this properly, I need to move
the magnet around and see if I can mis-align those particles. Really get stuck in there. That should do it. But nope, yet again, all the images are present,
they're all readable, and even Scan disk returns the same results as when I began. The Alnico magnet hasn't even caused a single
ounce of commotion. So, those MEMES of someone magnetising their
floppy to a fridge. Well, actually, the data is probably just
fine. I even tried it myself, overnight with several
magnets, and everything was still in place the next day. Apparently, we're going to need a stronger
magnet. That's where this little Neodymium magnet
comes in handy. As you can see from the packaging alone, this
one packs a punch. No kiddies allowed for this mother. Now, Neodymium creates the most powerful magnets
per unit volume, and are often referred to as Rare Earth Magnets. This particular one has a pull of 32.2KG. More than enough to disrupt a few particles
I reckon. Barry is the disk nominated to take the brunt
of this one. I thought I'd first do a quick check with
the Alnico magnet, and yep, everything was fine. You can see the difference between these two
by measuring how far away each magnet can attract this little bulldog clip. The Alnico needs to be 2cm away (which is
just under an inch), wheres Neodymium can spread it's attractive force over 6.5cm (or
just under 3 inches). So first, I'll do the non touching circling
around Barry, which actually, again does nothing. The ZIP files check out, and the games are
playable. Alright Barry, you've had your fun. How about I just wang this magnet straight
onto you. See how you cope with that. Now straight away, the floppy drive took longer
to read Barry, but on first glance, all looks well. However, trying to unzip the files is a different
matter. Almost immediately PAP.ZIP returns a "Read
Fault Error", and a Scan Disk returns more errors than you could shake a stick collective
at. The saving grace here is that I'm still able
to reformat the disk without trouble. So the data may be gone, but the media lives
on. Larry suffers a similar fate here. Some of the images are fine, but some refuse
to load, and again Scan Disk presents many an error. So Gary, what do we do with you Gary? Well, I thought I'd give it a good seeing
to with the strong magnet, which indeed did upset it's formatting, but like the other
disks, could be re-formatted no problem. So I decided to get silly. I grabby a silver marker and rubbed it all
over the disk surface to see if it would cause issues, and from the off, you could hear there
were problems. The drive couldn't even tell it was formatted
anymore, and even worse, couldn't re-format it either. So I
guess we're left with the following conclusion; Never put strong magnets on your floppy disks,
and although weak ones may be ok, it's probably best not to risk it. But under no circumstances what-so-ever, should
you act like a silly "twonk" and rub permanent marker all over the floppy surface, damaging
both the disk, and more than likely your floppy drive as well. That concludes today's lesson, thanks for
watching. If you want more click here. You can also subscribe and support me if you
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