How does a magnet help you delete files from your hard drive?

Question

Someone told me it does. If it does, wouldn't wipe the WHOLE hard drive and cause you to rebuild the thing?

Answer 1

I don't recommend doing this, it could ruin your hard drive permanently.

Answer 2

What you need is a very special magnet.



A 'neodymium' magnet. They are specially designed for fixing hard drives. You can buy them at surplus stores, or through the internet. You can buy a special 'Hard Drive' magnet, but believe me, they're just charging you extra. Kind of like Monster Cable.



What it actually does it remove any extra fragments from deleted files the computer missed. If you're going to be serious about computers you should have one. Use it like once a month to make sure everything is clean. It will make your computer run faster. With out the weight of those unused fragments Hard Drives can spin faster.



Now when you rub it on your harddrive be careful not to move it too fast because there are little metal parts in the hard drive, and you don't want to do anything to break it do you? Don't worry, if you move it slowly, you will be ok. That's the only trick really!



Oh yeah, you *could* pull the magnet out of an old broken hard drive, but it's tricky to get it a part. That's the magnet it uses to erase it's own data. It's easier just to buy a new one, but if you'r feeling adventurous and have an old broken hard drive go for it.



Good luck with your first cleaning!

Answer 3

Your hard drive itself actually contains a rather powerful magnet. If you took it apart there is a neodymium magnet sitting dead center of the spindle.



http://www.dansdata.com/magnets.htm



If you want to completely bust your HDD you'd need a VERY powerful magnet... like a big stack of rare earth magnets to actually damage the drive.



It won't probably just erase your data, it would actually physically break the hard drive because you'll damage the fragile components that make up the read/write head.

Answer 4

It may be easier to just overwrite the hard drive by reinstalling the system, or by partitioning it.

Using a magnet (called degaussing) can work if done properly, but why take a chance?

Answer 5

Yes, it would wipe the whole thing. You can't selectively delete files that way.

Answer 6

sounds like a great way to completely destroy a hard drive

Answer 7

Yes it would wipe everything