I recently bought a new PC, which came with a pair of little stereo speakers. These are currently sitting either side of my monitor, with the computer itself sitting off to the left, so the left-hand speaker is between the computer and the monitor.
There is probably only a four-inch gap between the speaker and the computer, and I wonder if the magnet in the speaker risks doing bad things to my hard drive. Or are computer speakers and/or hard drives well shielded, to allow for this set-up, which I assume is fairly common?
Both should be shielded. Furthermore, most speaker magnets are relatively weak, in the scheme of things. You really only have to worry about large, powerful speakers and subwoofers.
The hard drive is well shielded in a steel shell, regardless of any shielding on the speakers.
You don’t say whether the monitor is a CRT or an LCD. If it’s a CRT, then either the speakers are shielded, or the magnets are so tiny that they couldn’t possibly affect the disk: CRTs are very sensitive to magnets.
We took a part a drive at work that failed due to a power outage (us engineer geeks like to take stuff apart whenever we get an opportunity). Inside were two of the strongest honkin magnets I have ever seen. We stuck them to a file cabinet and had a fair amount of difficulty getting them back off again. We were much impressed. The heads and platters were really cool too.
Unless you have some concert sized speakers, the magnetic field from your speaker magnets pales in comparison to what is already in the drive to help move the head around. Don’t sweat it.
CRT + speaker doesn’t always = shielded. One of my friends used to have a monitor with built-in speakers, and the picture would vibrate whenever it was playing a sound.