I’m sure there’s a pretty big magnet in that subwoofer, but it’s in the perfect spot next to my leather chair!
Even if the magnet wasn’t a concern, I’d be REALLY worried about the vibration.
A woofer mag is s big but given the level of intensity focused at the HD’s write head I doubt it’s intense enough to scramble a hard drive, but I still wouldn’t do it, why take the risk?
Get yourself a nice big piece of iron (1/2" thick or so) and the right size to set on top of your speaker & make a nice shelf for the laptop.
Astro’s probably right, not enough magnetic flux would reach the laptop to mess it up. But this hunk of iron will make very sure of that. And it should steady the vibrations that Joey P mentioned, too.
And you can have fun with gullible friends, making up outlandish pseudo-technical explanations for them: “Well, most people think that tin-foil hats are protection enough. But I know that you need a much larger chunk of iron, and at groin level, not as a hat, to ensure …”
I’ve used a subwoofer as a TV stand before and it caused a color distortion along the bottom of the screen.
Wouldn’t you rather have a block of wood? Using iron seems to be a, er, bad idea. Seems like it would just magnetize the iron and maybe make it worse.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
A speaker magnet will distort the beams in a cathode ray tube, but it won’t do much to an LCD screen.
I kind of agree with Vox Imperatoris; magnetic fields can be shaped, but it’s hard to block one. Instead of trying to isolate the laptop from the speaker, just put some distance between the two. Maybe you could put a steel plate (sheet metal, or maybe a cookie tray) under the wood top to help direct the field.
Let me rephrase this OP and see if we can locate any problems;
“Will putting my magnetic storage device on top of a large magnet cause me any problems?”
:dubious:
>“Will putting my magnetic storage device on top of a large magnet cause me any problems?”
I think it is likliest to cause problems because of vibration, if the magnet it is on is part of an operating subwoofer. Especially, I’d worry about corrupting the information on the hard drive by having the write head vibrate too much during writes.
I don’t think it will cause problems due to magnetic interactions per se.
It is pretty easy to block magnetic fields. Steel will typically do this for you. What it is actually doing is creating a much easier path for the magnetic field lines to pass through; think of arching lines coming out one pole of the magnet, circling through space, and entering the other pole. If there is steel in the neighborhood, they will preferentially go through that and will not much reach out behind it.
The steel you would want is a “mild steel”, the milder the better. This means you want steel with a low carbon content. Many steels have designations like 1018 or 1020 or 1030 steel. The last two digits represent the carbon (I can’t remember whether “18” means it is 1.8% carbon or 0.18% carbon but think it’s the latter). Mild steels are softer and cheaper; often if you buy the cheapest steel you find, or steel whose alloy is not named (like bar stock at a hardware store), it is very mild steel.
Choosing such a steel gives you a barrier that is easy for the magnetic field lines to pass through. It also gives you a barrier that will not become permanently magnetized by the temporary field lines.
Ok, I think I’ll just get an end table for the other side of the chair. No sense in risking it.