🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <18...@odin.SGI.COM> ci...@bananaPC.sgi.com (Dave Ciemiewicz) writes:
>he noticed that the customer had used magnets to
>hold the colorful disks to the side of the their metal filing cabinet.

I've heard this story in many variations, but I don't fully believe it anymore.
Here's why:

A few months ago I had a bunch of disks I wanted to REALLY erase the data on.
(These were 3.5" DSDD Sony disks with Macintosh data on them.)
I decided to do this with a magnet instead of just reformatting the disk.
The first magnet I tried was a refrigerator magnet.  Rubbed it all over the
disk.  Put the disk back in the drive.  All the data was still there.

O.K., a refrigerator magnet wasn't strong enough.  Next I tried a cow magnet.
For those who have never seen one, a cow magnet is a round-ended cylinder a few
inches long and nearly an inch across.  They are fed to cows.  Cows sometimes
eat hay that has been baled with metal wire, you see, and if a cowhand isn't
careful he may leave a little sharp shred of metal in the hay, which causes
problems when it passes through the cows's alimentary canal.  The cow magnet
is heavy, so it stays in the crop, and the shreds stick to it (until the cow
dies, at which point you could theoretically recover the magnet).  The cow
magnet I have will hold a good fraction of a pound of metal.  Rubbed it all
over the disk.  Put the disk back in the drive.  All the data was still there.

O.K., now I was getting mad.  A year or so back I blew out the woofer on an
Advent speaker.  For some reason I had the corpse of the woofer on a shelf.
The magnet on the woofer was capable of lifting MANY pounds of metal.  Prying
a nail off this magnet requires BOTH HANDS.  I lugged the woofer into the
living room (didn't want it in the same ROOM as my precious backup disks!)
and rubbed the DISK all over the MAGNET.

You guessed it.  Put the disk back in the drive.  All the data was still there.

I gave up and reformatted the disk.

MORAL: It takes a lot more than a medium-size magnet to trash most of today's
floppy disks.  (On the other hand, don't press your luck, and don't blame it
on me if you do and it doesn't work out.)

	Howard A. Landman
	landman...@eng.sun.com