How Magnets Affect Computer Disks BackGround One of the most commonly used Computer data storaged mediums

is a Comput er Disk or a Floppy. These are used in everyday life, in either our workplace or at home. These disks have many purposes, such as: Storing data: Floppies can be used to store software/data for short preiods of t ime, Transferring data: Floppies are used to transfer/copy data from one computer to another. Hiding data: Floppies are also sometimes used to hide sensitive or confidential data, because of the disk's small size it can be hidden very easily. Advertising: Because floppies are cheap to buy, they are used to advertise diffe rent types of software, such as: Software for the internet advertised on America Online Flo ppies. Floppies are also considered to be very sensitve data storage mediums. T hese Disks have numerous advantages and disadvanteges. Even though floppies are used so commonly they are also not very dependable. They have numerous conditions under which they should normally be kept. For example: the actuall magnetic disk inside the hard cover of the disk must NEVER be touched, the magnetic disk inside, must be protected b y the metallic sliding shield, the disk must always be within the temperature of 50 to 140 Fahrenheit and the disk must never be bought near a magnet! (3M Diskettes) There are many such hazards to computer disks. Problems caused by magnet s are very common. A floppy can be damaged unknowingly if it is kept near a magnet, th at may be in the open or inside any device, such as a speaker phone in computer speaker s or stereo or a telephone. And becuase of the common use of magnets in everyday life , more and more floppies are damaged everyday. Even though protective coverings against magnets and other electrical ha zards, are available for floppies, they are not used very commonly. Therefore, floppies are not a very safe media for storage, even though they are convienient.

Some of the most commonly used diskettes are by 3M and Sony and other su ch companies. The floppies are sold in boxes with instructions on them to not to br ing floppies near magnets and other instructions of DOs and DONTs. These instruction s must always be followed. Floppies have different capacities such as 720 KB (kilobytes) and 1.44 M B (megabytes). Floppies also have different sizes, 3.5" and 5.25". The most common ly used floppy is usually 3.5". It is not soft and cannot be bent, where as a 5.25" disk is soft and can be bent! A floppy is a round, flat piece of Mylar coated with ferric oxide, a rustlike su bstance containing tiny particles capable of holding a magnetic field, and encased in a protective plastic cover, the disk jacket. Data is stored on a floppy disk by the disk driv e's read/write head, which alters the magnetic orientation of the particles. Orientation in one direction represents binary 1; orientation in the other, binary 0. Purpose The purpose of my experiment was to test Floppies to see how delicate th ey are near magnets and how much damage can be done to the disks and to the software on it bye a single magnet. I also hope my project will help others to be aware that co mputer disks are very delicate and sensitive to temperature, weather, magnets...etc.

Hypothesis When the magnets are bought near the disk, the disk should be damaged in ternally along with the software in it. And the weakest magnet should cause the least dam age and the strongest magnet should cause the most damage.

Experimentation Material: Four 3.5" Floppy Diskettes. Four different Magnets One Personal Home Computer Printer Software: Windows95 Norton Disk Doctor Dos (Ver 4.00.950)

Procedure: Every Floppy Diskette has 2874 sectors. This was calculated by dividing the total number of bytes on a disk by the number of bytes every sector occupies. There is a total of 1,457,664 bytes on every Floppy, and every sector occupies 512 bytes. Therefore, 512 / 1457664 is 2874, ie. the total number of sectors on every Floppy. First, I obtained the four 3.5" IBM formatted floppy diskettes (Highland) . Next I obtained the four different magnets of different strengths and sizes and tested and verified their strengths by bringing iron filings near each of them and observing how muc h of iron filings each one of them attracted and then noting which magnet was the stronges t and which was the weakest in order. Then I tested each of the disks for existing err ors by using a program called Norton Disk Doctor (NDD) which has the ability to detect and fix error on a disk. There were no error on any of the four disks. Next, I decided to hold the magnets near the disks for the experimentati on for about 30 seconds at about the same place on the disk. I did so on all of the fou r disk. Then, I brought the disks home and tested all four of the disks in a dis k testing and repair program called Norton Disk Doctor. I notices that each one of the disks s uffered damage. Every one of the four disk was numbered. The Floppy with the weakest mag net was "Disk 1" and the Floppy with the strongest magnet was "Disk 4" respectively. This was done to avoid possible confusion in the disks. Result Every Floppy Diskette has 2874 sectors. This was calculated by dividing the total number of bytes on a disk by the number of bytes every sector occupies. There is a total of 1,457,664 bytes on every Floppy, and every sector occupies 512 bytes. Therefore, 512 / 1457664 is 2874, ie. the total number of sectors on every Floppy. After every Floppy had been tested, I noted all the results. The results were as follows: Disk 1: Total Bytes on Disk: 1,457,664

Total Total Total Total

Bytes in Bad Sectors: 3584 Number of Sectors: 2874 Number of Bad Sectors: 7 Number of Good Sectors: 2867

Disk 2: Total Total Total Total Total Bytes on Disk: 1,457,664 Bytes in Bad Sectors: 5632 Number of Sectors: 2874 Number of Bad Sectors: 11 Number of Good Sectors: 2863

Disk 3: Total Total Total Total Total Bytes on Disk: 1,457,664 Bytes in Bad Sectors: 15360 Number of Sectors: 2874 Number of Bad Sectors: 30 Number of Good Sectors: 2844

Disk 4: Total Total Total Total Total Bytes on Disk: 1,457,664 Bytes in Bad Sectors: 19968 Number of Sectors: 2874 Number of Bad Sectors: 39 Number of Good Sectors: 2833

After the testing, I discovered that even the smallest of the Magnets co uld cause bad sectors and damage both, the disk and the data on the disk. Even thought the damage wasn't very big, it was big enough to corrupt any program on the disk, becuase e very part of the present file would be necessary for its correct use and any bad sectors w ould almost destroy the file and make it worthless.

Conclusion: In conclusion, this experiment proved that floppies are very sensitive to magnets and should not be brought near them at anytime. When the magnets were brought ne ar the floppies, the disks were damaged and the weakest magnet caused the least damage and the strongest magnet caused the most damage.