When or why are magnets safe to use now?
In: Technology
It’s already been touched on slightly, but the technology behind data storage has changed pretty significantly.
In a hard drive you have moving parts, to put it simply:
* A read/write head passes over a spinning disc called a platter.
* This platter is coated with a magnetised layer with sectional areas where the data is stored
* When the write head records data on areas it changes the direction of the magnetic field
* ‘0’ might be represented by the field orientating towards the head while ‘1’ has the field orientated away from it
* You end up with lots of little magnetised areas of 0s and 1s representing your data with fields pointing in different directions
Place a magnet next to them. and that direction of magnetism is going to change. Place a strong enough magnet and you can affect the moving parts themselves.
A solid state drive works by removing or giving a level of charge to a cell, think of it like the static charge you get from rubbing cloth together. This charge is unaffected by a magnet (or at least, the magnet would basically have to be powerful enough to be doing catastrophic damage to the rest of the components anyway)
Being able to store a charge in a cell rather than relying on magnetism means that modern ‘solid state’ or ‘flash’ storage is practically immune to magnetic interference.
Edit: [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mh3o886qpg) is a very well made video showing the basics of how modern flash storage works.
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