Magnets and Computers
Posted November 7, 2006
June 19, 2006
I would like to know if a magnet that is close by or near a hard drive can delete the information that's on that hard drive?
Hi
Can a magnet delete data from a hard drive? Sort of.
Delete is probably not the most technically accurate term to use. However, a magnet can corrupt data that is on a hard drive.
It probably needs to be a pretty strong magnet. For example, IT workers often use slightly magnetized screwdrivers, and these do not seem to harm the data on hard drives.
When a file is deleted from a hard drive, it is not really deleted. Rather, the space is marked as available for use by the operating system or any application that needs it. The data is still there. You just can't see it. The data remains in place, until that portion of the hard drive is overwritten.
In order to truly delete a file to where it cannot be recovered given the state of current technology, one has to overwrite the data several times using random patterns of zeros and ones.
For this, third party utilities exist. Zilla Data Nuker appears to be one of these. See: http://www.dirfile.com/zilla_data_nuker.htm. Please note that Ask About Computers does not endorse Zilla Data Nuker, since we have never had occassion to use it.
All the best
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