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How to get a magnet out of a hard drive. Hard disk drive (HDD) magnetic bracket

Work in service center, where there are dead screws, well, they just filled up. All screwdrivers hang on magnets, conveniently, at the same time they are magnetized. Raz successfully used it to retrieve the keys that had fallen down the elevator shaft. But he did not come up with specific applications. And it doesn’t matter who you are and who she is, it affects any girl.

Separating the magnet itself from the metal plate can be very difficult at times. It's very easy to cut your hand. In the photo above, you can see the already separated magnet.

To separate the magnets from the metal plate, I pry the magnet from below with a knife blade. I just ask you - be careful! With the help of pliers and some effort, we bend the metal plate and carefully pry off the magnets. The coil is now protected from damage on one side with adhesive tape, on the other - with a ruler. The conclusions of the coil that go to the oscilloscope must be twisted so that there is less interference.

We need more powerful magnets, I bought it on ebay for a friend of mine from Moscow. Two magnets are packed so that between them there are 10 centimeters of foam. If you connect together, then you will tear off the horseradish force of 300 kg. BUT now put antimagnetic seals. We do not throw it away either, it is perfectly polished and will come in handy someday.

I remind you!!! Permanent magnets are afraid of strong heat!! And especially - sharp heating! Therefore, when cutting, they MUST be cooled! I just put a container with water next to it, and periodically lowered the magnet into the water after I made a small incision. So, the magnets are cut off.

I remind you!!! Permanent magnets are afraid of strong heat!! These are very strong magnets! But here one problem arose: the magnets, having a curved shape, do not fit in the width of my plate ....

How to separate a magnet from a hard drive

Hard magnets are a thing. At work, a thick thermally insulated door leads to my laboratory. Closes with difficulty due to weight and elastic seals. I had to constantly close the latch. It is only necessary to rest very strongly on the head of the screw and slowly scroll it.

To date, I have not heard about neodymium magnets, probably only a deaf person. They are made from an alloy - NdFeB, which has excellent magnetic properties (it is not only powerfully magnetized, but also very resistant to demagnetization). It is not difficult to buy neodymium magnets in Moscow, but they can bring a lot of benefits to the household. Consider several non-trivial ways to use such magnets in the household. So,

The simplest and most fun are toys and puzzles. For this, rather weak small magnets are used, usually in the form of balls. Various complex forms and sculptures are assembled from them. But do not forget that such magnets should NEVER be given to children under 4 years old! A swallowed pair of such magnets, having pinched the wall of the intestine or stomach, can easily cause its perforation with all the consequences.

Neodymium magnets are great for fixing. In principle, a pair of medium magnets is quite capable of replacing a desktop vise. For all that, it is more convenient to use magnets, since they can be used to fix parts of complex shape.

Motorists will probably be interested in using neodymium magnets as an oil filter. If you hang it on the drain plug of the engine crankcase, then it will hold all metal inclusions in this place, which will then be easy to remove.

Due to their strength, such magnets can be successfully used in search activities. For example, find a fallen needle in a carpet, or a machine gun from the times of the Great Patriotic War in a river (special search magnets with an eye for a rope). Can also be used to find reinforcement in walls.

Since ancient times, magnets have been used by magicians to create the illusion of levitation. With the advent of neodymium, such tricks have reached a new level.

You can also successfully magnetize various steel objects with such a magnet (screwdrivers, bits, needle tweezers, etc.). They can even re-magnetize a demagnetized ordinary magnet.

Fixing inventory and tools. Special holders with magnetic properties will help you in the competent planning of the workspace.

Repairing dents ranging from bodywork to wind instrument repairs.
To delete data from magnetic media(hard drives, audio and video cassettes, credit cards). A powerful magnetic field perfectly removes all information. Fast and without extra effort.

In general, neodymium magnets are simply indispensable assistant in the economy. Only when working with them, especially powerful ones, strictly observe safety precautions. If a finger or another part of the body gets between magnetic objects (I already wrote about children), this can end very badly.

Take care of yourself!
Based on materials: http://neo-magnets.ru/

"Destroying Myths" - this section is dedicated to the most common myths that have taken root in the world information technologies. The editors of the CHIP test lab will help you distinguish fiction from truth.

Many people think that if an ordinary magnet is near a computer or hard drive, it will result in data loss.

Truth.

This opinion spread when 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch floppy disks were widely used. Magnets really shouldn’t be brought close to these storage media: even a distance of three centimeters was enough to destroy all the data. However, even neodymium magnets with a powerful magnetic field do not pose any danger to hard drives. Modern hard drives with a capacity of 1 TB or more consist of two to four plates coated with a magnetic layer based on iron oxide and cobalt. Information on the plates is located in small areas (domains) of the disk, which can have two states of magnetization - 0 or 1. Bits of information on modern HDDs are stored in vertical domains. This method, called perpendicular recording, allows you to save up to 19 GB of information per square centimeter.

Magnetic fields Reading and writing data to the HDD is done by moving the head over the platter at a distance of only 10 nm. This element works as an electromagnet and creates a strong field, under the influence of which the domains are magnetized.

Thus, it is magnetic fields that make it possible to write or erase information in domains.

But why then does an ordinary magnet not pose any danger? The fact is that the plates are so strongly magnetized that they negatively affect HDD work only very powerful fields with induction over 0.5 Tesla are capable. Since the strength of the magnetic field decreases with distance from the object, already at a distance of a few millimeters it drops to a negligible value. Therefore, the magnets brought to the HDD are too weak to affect the information stored on the hard disk.

Even a neodymium magnet with an adhesive force of 200 kg at a distance of 10 mm from an object creates a field with a magnetic induction equal to only 0.3 Tesla. However, it should be understood that if a magnet is brought near a working hard disk, it can deflect the read / write head to the side or cause it to touch the platter. This is fraught with write errors and, consequently, data loss.

HDD hard drives as an important and familiar carrier of information, it has one unpleasant property, it is short-lived. And after the failure, it is completely useless. Most often, it ends up in the trash, or deliberately scrapped for recycling, which in our country is considered completely meaningless for a number of reasons, but the main one is the lack of a clear and widespread mechanism for recycling and separate waste collection. This topic is for a separate discussion, perhaps we will return to it. In the meantime, we find application in everyday life, because taking something apart is always interesting for an inquisitive mind! You can show the children the device of modern disks and have an “interesting” time.

How can we benefit from a non-performing drive? The only use that came to my mind was to get neodymium magnets out of it, which are known for their magnetizing strength and high resistance to demagnetization.

The process of disassembling and extracting magnets.

With a tool, this is not at all difficult to do, especially since the disk is ready to fulfill its final purpose.

We will need:

Screwdriver six-pointed star (T6, T7… depending on the model).
Thin flathead screwdriver or strong knife.
Pliers.

I have HDD WD 3.5 inches, which faithfully served me for 4 years.

We unscrew the screws around the perimeter, but the casing will not open just like that, another one is hidden under the sticker. Apparently, this is such a seal, it is quite difficult to find it. The hidden screw is located on the axis of the magnetic heads (I marked it with a red circle in the photo), and in this area there is a hidden fastener. But you can not stand on ceremony, because we only need magnets, the rest has no value. You should get something similar, one or two metal plates with magnets. With the help of pliers and some effort, we bend the metal plate and carefully pry off the magnets. I was lucky, the plate turned out to be flat, and I glued it with super glue to the shelf on the desktop. The tool is at hand, it does not dangle on the table, and most importantly, we gave a second life to some part of the hard drive. I think everyone will find a use for magnets in everyday life.

Often users are wary of magnets lying near electronics. Someone told us, or we saw for ourselves: these things can easily distort the image, or even permanently break expensive gadgets. But is the threat really that big?

Imagine the situation: magnets were bought as a gift for a child. In less than an hour, these things are near the computer, near the smartphone, near the TV ... Many months of dad's salary is under threat. The father of the family selects the "magnets" and throws them on the far shelf, but then he thinks: maybe not everything is so scary?

This is exactly what happened to DigitalTrends journalist Simon Hill. For the search for truth, he decided to turn to experts.

Matt Newby, first4magnets:

“Such ideas have remained with people from the old electronic devices- for example, CRT monitors and televisions that were sensitive to magnetic fields. If you place a strong magnet near one of these devices, you could distort the image. Fortunately, modern TVs and monitors are not that sensitive.”

What about smartphones?

“The vast majority of magnets that you come across every day, even some of the very strong ones, will not adversely affect your smartphone. In fact, it also contains several very small magnets at once, which are responsible for important functions. For example, wireless magnetic induction charging is used.”

But it's too early to relax. Matt warns that magnetic fields can still interfere with some sensors, such as the digital compass and magnetometer. And if you bring a strong magnet to your smartphone, the steel components will be magnetized. They will become weak magnets and prevent the compass from being properly calibrated.

Don't use a compass and think it doesn't concern you? The problem is that others need it, sometimes very desired applications. For instance, Google Maps a compass is required in order to determine the orientation of the smartphone in space. It is also needed in dynamic games. Owners of the last iPhone models magnets can even interfere with taking pictures - after all, the smartphone uses optical image stabilization. Therefore, Apple does not recommend official case makers to include magnets and metal components in their products.

Next up are hard drives.

The idea that magnets simply destroy the contents of the HDD is still very popular today. Suffice it to recall an episode from the cult series Breaking Bad, where the main character Walter White destroys digital dirt on himself with a huge electromagnet. Matt speaks again:

“Magnetically recorded data can be damaged by magnets—this includes things like cassette tapes, floppy disks, VHS tapes, and plastic cards.”

And yet - is it possible that the character of Bryan Cranston did in real life?

“It is theoretically possible to damage a hard drive with an incredibly strong magnet if you bring it directly to the surface of the drive. But hard drives have neodymium magnets in them... a normal size magnet won't hurt them. If you, for example, attach magnets to the outside system block your PC, it will have no effect on the hard drive."

And if your laptop or PC runs on solid state drive nothing to worry about at all:

"Flash drives and SSDs are not affected by even strong static magnetic fields."

We are surrounded by magnets at home, says the expert. They are used in every computer, speaker, TV, motor, smartphone. Modern life without them it would be simply impossible.

Perhaps the main danger posed by strong neodymium magnets is the danger of being swallowed by a young child. If you swallow several at once, they will be attracted to each other through the walls of the intestines, Matt warns. Accordingly, the child cannot avoid peritonitis (inflammation of the abdominal cavity - ed.), and, therefore, immediate surgical intervention.