🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <hnsngr-0409...@news.sirius.com>, hns...@sirius.com
(Ron Hunsinger) wrote:

> I didn't try the experiment only once. I repeated it with several magnets
> (fridge magnets, loudspeaker magnets, the magnetic latches on my
> cupboards, and the telephone). I repeated the same experiment many times -
> I left the floppy under the phone for a week, occasionally repositioning
> the phone over it to try other "hot spots".
> 
> This is a standard Western Electric Bell telephone - the model most likely
> to cause damage. I see no reason to believe other phones of the same model
> would perform differently. I see no reason to believe other models would
> behave worse.
> 
> If you doubt the results, try the experiment yourself. (That's part of the
> scientific method, too.) If you want to prove that a ringing telephone
> will EVER erase a floppy disk, I suggest you get to work.
> 
> And that's my point. Instead of sitting around pontificating about how
> "somebody" said that "someone" erased a bunch of disks/tapes/whatever, so
> it must be true, you should all try the experiment for yourself. It isn't
> hard. Try your own variations on. Let's put this fable to bed.

In David Pogue and Joseph Schorr's "MacWorld Mac and PowerMac Secrets,"
3rd edition, similar experiments are recounted, including fastening a
floppy to the refrigerator with a magnet all day. No damage to data was
found. Also printed is a letter from a researcher at the magnet lab at
M.I.T., where despite high magnetic fields, their floppy-failure rate was
no higher than the national average. ISBN 1-56884-791-2, page 259.

That being said, I once absentmindedly set a kitchen timer with a magnet
on its back on a pile of old floppies for several weeks. The top three
disks in the stack were not only unreadable, but could not be re-formatted
successfully. Whether this was due to the magnet or their age, I do not
know, as I did not repeat the "experiment."

-- 
Pieter "Sloppy housekeeper? Me?" Breitner

---

We love newbies here.  The thing is, we like some of the newbies as
friends, and we like others with ketchup. -Ray Depew-

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