this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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A hard drive can be corrupted by minimal exposure to a basic electromagnet like a CRT degaussing coil, even without exposing the platters.
It would do nothing, however, in a server environment filled with racks, raised floors, and lots of barriers between a person and the drives. You’d still need to pass the coil over the drives themselves, while nearly making contact for several seconds to a minute to cause any significant data loss.
The drive case itself didn’t, though. The server, air around the components within its case, the air around the server within the rack, the rack, and the other ferrous materials in the room are what provide enough interference to prevent bit flipping on the disk for the most part. This is assuming a reasonable source of magnetic radiation and not a massive bench power supply on a crash cart powering a rolling EMP. (Of course, I’m being hyperbolic, and it would really just be a more powerful electromagnet and not an EMP)
An electromagnet or even in some cases, a powerful enough rare earth magnet exposed to the drives themselves, or left in proximity to a single computer for an extended period of time can cause destructive data loss to a spinning platter hard disk.