Someone intentionally put a magnet by my hard drive.

By benjamine6
in General Discussion

 Share

Recommended Posts

Collaborator

benjamine6

Posted
Posted

It was a very small one, one you can find in kids' toys, but either way, there was a magnet right by my hard drive for god knows how long.. and i diddn't discover it until this morning. I started asking people around the house if they knew anything about it, but none of them did. Whoever did it did do it on purpose, because i have the screws DEADBOLTED in there. Someone UNSCREWED them and put the magnet there. I haven't opened the side panel of my computer since day one when i had it built by my local computer professional after i had gotten the parts for it. I haven't found any signs of any corruption, but the computer did have overheating issues which lead me to discover the magnet. There had been a whole bunch of VHS tapes right by the computer. Most of them, very good movies indeed, the entire Back to the future trilogy, independence day, Toy story 1 & 2, you get the point.

 

Anyway, i need suggestions on WHO might have did such a thing. I mean, a bunch of my brothers friends were here. Some big guy nearly took off with my New Nintendo 3DS XL, But that's a whole 'nother story.

Grand Master

metallithrax

Posted
Posted
7 minutes ago, benjamine6 said:

It was a very small one, one you can find in kids' toys, but either way, there was a magnet right by my hard drive for god knows how long.. and i diddn't discover it until this morning. I started asking people around the house if they knew anything about it, but none of them did. Whoever did it did do it on purpose, because i have the screws DEADBOLTED in there. Someone UNSCREWED them and put the magnet there. I haven't opened the side panel of my computer since day one when i had it built by my local computer professional after i had gotten the parts for it. I haven't found any signs of any corruption, but the computer did have overheating issues which lead me to discover the magnet. There had been a whole bunch of VHS tapes right by the computer. Most of them, very good movies indeed, the entire Back to the future trilogy, independence day, Toy story 1 & 2, you get the point.

 

Anyway, i need suggestions on WHO might have did such a thing. I mean, a bunch of my brothers friends were here. Some big guy nearly took off with my New Nintendo 3DS XL, But that's a whole 'nother story.

No, I don't get the point

4 minutes ago, jjkusaf said:

hmmm....what is the question?  A kid's magnet isn't going to damage or cause corruption on the hard drive.

He wants us to tell him who might have done this.  Me, i think Warwagon did it - it's the sort of joke he would play.

Grand Master

Jim K Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted
1 minute ago, metallithrax said:

He wants us to tell him who might have done this.  Me, i think Warwagon did it - it's the sort of joke he would play.

hmmm...yea ... @warwagonis a strong possibility.  I would put my money on @DevTech though.

Grand Master

DevTech

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, jjkusaf said:

hmmm...yea ... @warwagonis a strong possibility.  I would put my money on @DevTech though.

I would only do it in the case it was iron-ic

 

So the question is Hound of the Baskervilles. We all put on Sherlock Holmes caps, smoke a pipe, play the violin, consume medically spirit lifting substances while simultaneously avoiding the perils of the Scottish Moors on a Dark and Story Night.

 

Or we can always go back further to the 1500's and chat with William of Occam: tiny magnet fell into case during original assembly. (1)

 

(2) The case somewhere has a large enough opening for magnet to fall in by accident. Even a fan without a grill etc.

 

All other increasingly less likely alternatives involve inimical intent by a human, except for a subsequent impossibly less likely Series of Unfortunate Events (4) such as spontaneous creation of tiny magnets as a new heavier than the Higg's Boson particle.

 

(3) Inimical intent possibilities require as a pre-condition entites that have anger or extreme dislike to the OP combined with confidence to open a computer case combined with lack of basic science and technology education to think a tiny magnet could damage a modern hard drive platter.

 

A) Anger/Dislike

B) Lack of impulse control so A) can be acted on

C) Confidence to operate basic tools

D) Low IQ or Lack of attention in Science Class

 

Using standard FBI Profiling, the criminal responsible is Biff (from Back to the Future)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grand Master

devHead

Posted
Posted
On 7/17/2016 at 8:42 AM, benjamine6 said:

It was a very small one, one you can find in kids' toys, but either way, there was a magnet right by my hard drive for god knows how long.. and i diddn't discover it until this morning. I started asking people around the house if they knew anything about it, but none of them did. Whoever did it did do it on purpose, because i have the screws DEADBOLTED in there. Someone UNSCREWED them and put the magnet there. I haven't opened the side panel of my computer since day one when i had it built by my local computer professional after i had gotten the parts for it. I haven't found any signs of any corruption, but the computer did have overheating issues which lead me to discover the magnet. There had been a whole bunch of VHS tapes right by the computer. Most of them, very good movies indeed, the entire Back to the future trilogy, independence day, Toy story 1 & 2, you get the point.

 

Anyway, i need suggestions on WHO might have did such a thing. I mean, a bunch of my brothers friends were here. Some big guy nearly took off with my New Nintendo 3DS XL, But that's a whole 'nother story.

You know what, Benjamin (I'm assuming that's your real name, or some variant of your username), at Cornell University, they have an incredible piece of scientific equipment known as the "tunneling electron microscope." Now, this microscope is so powerful that by firing electrons, you can actually see images of the atom, the infinite decimally minute building block of our universe. But if I were using that microscope right now, I still wouldn't be able to locate my interest in your problem.  

 

Secondly, why did you name some of the movies?  Nobody was wondering "hmmm, I wonder which good movies he's talking about?"

 

Finally, don't worry about the hard drive - if it was a small magnet, it would have no effect on the disk inside.  But what's with the selective ALL CAPS?  Just wondering.  Maybe it was Mark?

Grand Master

techbeck

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, warwagon said:

I see you found the magnet I left for you.

 

You are an ass dude....lost all respect for you.....  :p

 

To answer the OP, your guess who did this is better than anyone elses.  Small magnets can be pretty strong.  Do you have a pic of the magnet? 

Grand Master

T3X4S

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Danielx64 said:

Is the OP that same guy who wrote about finding a surface book looged into his account? (If anyone remembers about that).

No - I think those far-fetched stories are always IllegalOperation - most think he is bored and makes stuff up.

  • firey, Danielx64 and +Nik Louch
  • Like 3
Grand Master

jnelsoninjax

Posted
Posted
7 minutes ago, T3X4S said:

No - I think those far-fetched stories are always IllegalOperation - most think  know he is bored and makes stuff up.

FIFY!

And my 2 cents: This 'story' sounds just like a @illegaloperation tale.

  • Danielx64, +Nik Louch and T3X4S
  • Like 3
Grand Master

DevTech

Posted
Posted
On 7/20/2016 at 1:28 PM, devHead said:

You know what, Benjamin (I'm assuming that's your real name, or some variant of your username), at Cornell University, they have an incredible piece of scientific equipment known as the "tunneling electron microscope." Now, this microscope is so powerful that by firing electrons, you can actually see images of the atom, the infinite decimally minute building block of our universe. But if I were using that microscope right now, I still wouldn't be able to locate my interest in your problem.  

 

Secondly, why did you name some of the movies?  Nobody was wondering "hmmm, I wonder which good movies he's talking about?"

 

Finally, don't worry about the hard drive - if it was a small magnet, it would have no effect on the disk inside.  But what's with the selective ALL CAPS?  Just wondering.  Maybe it was Mark?

He made an attempt to be interesting, to tell a story, to set the stage for whatever inventive entertainment people want to run with.

 

But that somehow exceeded the collective dis-intelligence of the internet forum format and and he should have aimed a lot lower into the big emptiness.  "Should he upgrade to Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro" is the question to ask if he really wanted to get peoples attention on an important and vital discussion...

 

In addition to Domain Join, the upgrade to the Windows 10 Pro version would give him "Enterprise Magnet Detection" which was a feature originally developed in Microsoft Garage but left the incubator when people realized how common nefarious magnet implantation occurs in office politics. Combined with BitLocker, MagnetLocker ensures that vital enterprise data like the schedule for the office XMAS party is constantly protected from both environmental and supra-environmental sources of digital degradation.

 

  • jnelsoninjax, T3X4S and devHead
  • Like 3
Grand Master

jnelsoninjax

Posted
Posted

I guess the important question of the day is "How many accounts does @illegaloperation have?" :D or dare I say it, could these be 'friends 'or 'acquaintances' of his?

  • +Nik Louch, Danielx64 and Ian W
  • Like 3
Grand Master

Mockingbird

Posted
Posted (edited)
5 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

I guess the important question of the day is "How many accounts does @illegaloperation have?" :D or dare I say it, could these be 'friends 'or 'acquaintances' of his?

Why did you tag me?  I have nothing to do with this topic.

 

I have to go back to babysitting my little cousin.

 

Bye-bye.

Grand Master

firey

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, illegaloperation said:

Why did you tag me?  I have nothing to do with this topic.

 

I have to go back to babysitting my little cousin.

 

Bye-bye.

Your baby cousin that 'stole the golf cart, parked it in your drive way, and rode off with your Macbook Pro while flirting with Sarah on the phone' ?

Grand Master

+Zagadka Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted

heh, I remember the many cases of users putting disks on the fridge using magnets and not knowing why their data is corrupted.

 

Though I can't speak too much. When I was a kid watching Mr. Wizard talking about magnetism, I decided to test his theory and put a giant magnet against the TV, leaving a permanent distortion.

 

But to this very day, I am terrified of putting my phone and Kindle in the same pocket. My brain knows they won't mess up each other, but... electromagnets...

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • You've tried DuckDuckGo and Brave Search, now get serious with SearXNG

      By Skyfrog · Posted

      For some reason I suddenly have the urge to go shopping at Sears.
    • You've tried DuckDuckGo and Brave Search, now get serious with SearXNG

      By Nas · Posted

      So I did a quick test based on 3+ different public instances from the litany at searx.space ... and it spins everything rather differently. It seems that SearXNG is a meta-search engine (queries multiple search indexes rather than only Google's or Bing's or Wikipedia's or Reddit's) that operates in two modes: > public instances ... each instance opens itself to outside users who piggyback on its cached search history; this instance's own identity becomes known/tracked but end-users are hidden similar to an anonymization proxy; this instance's querying of major search indexes may be API based [rated limited, blocked, etc.]). > private instances ... your private install/instance that itself queries multiple (configurable) search indexes of crawled web content; every major Search Engine associates all traffic to your private instance (so your traffic is tracked via network usages) but client-side tracking (your own browser/computer specs) is flushed because it's a "server" doing the querying rather than your browser. My test asked the same 1 question to the 3+ engines and they all returned vastly different results: some had CAPTCHA failures against Google, some had failures against Wikipedia, and the actual results were also different -- some had auto-complete enabled, others returned a wikipedia highlighted excerpt despite the Wikipedia failure (hinting at results being cached from previous keyword matching), and others just gave an Are-You-Human non-CAPTCHA loop before returning random results. So this begs the caveat: Search query results will vary based on which instance is used because every instance queries the other search indexes separate (and thus its results are influenced on that instance's aggregate search history and index-access limitations). The major distinctions for SearXNG versus DDG or Brave: > The search UI is 'untracked' since no UI trackers are baked-in which would phone home or lay cookies into your browser (for DDG/Brave usage stats), > There is no 'crawler' that canvasses the Internet to discover fresh content (it leaves that to the major search indexes), > Queries multiple search indexes ("meta-search engine") based on the configurations and usage history of the server instance, > Privacy-friendly due to its ability to shield user tracking via standing up a non-local server instance connectable to major VPN providers: queries would all appear to come from general VPN/Proxy providers rather than your private instance (whether installed locally or on your own VPS in the cloud). PS: I've previously come across specialized search engines of this nature that indexes searches across media assets like YT, OF, etc. SearXNG seems to be a good backbone...if the rate-limiting/captcha/etc. issues were resolved.
    • The Trump administration doesn't want you to use OpenAI's GPT-5.6 without its approval

      By excalpius · Posted

      For a guy who claims to hate Farage and the ignorant, gullible, rightwing racist skinheads sponsored by Putin that his lies represent, you sure are quoting them time and time and time again, mate. I guess you're conveniently ignoring the fact that your country and commonwealth just happened to work much better when it was still part of the E.U.? Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.
    • The Trump administration doesn't want you to use OpenAI's GPT-5.6 without its approval

      By ad47uk · Posted

      Do you live in the U.K? Do any of the people here that are against the UK leaving the E.U, live in the U.K? If not then why are you bothered? If you do live here then it is a different thing . Brexit was a good idea, should have done it years before, it was done badly, but the idea was good. You are saying the same thing as remainers do, oh we did what Putin wanted, we listened to the lies and Farage. I hate Farage and never believed most of what he said, certainly did not believe the £350m a week for the NHS. But we did pay a lot of money to the E.U and yes some of it came back, but what is the point of paying it out for only some of it to come back? Get out of the E.U, no money to them and in theory we can use the money to do things in the country. I said in theory, but our governments are a total and complete waste of space. No matter what colour rosette they wear. You and others say it was a mistake and yet the two main parties in the U.K are not looking at rejoining the EU, I wonder why that is? I was not tricked by anyone. Makes no odds now, we are out and have been for 10 years, what we need is a decent government to run the country. All they do is shout at each other like a load of kids and seems to do nothing and make this country more into a police and nanny state. Getting more like China all the time.
    • 4TB TEAMGROUP MP44Q, 2TB T-Force G50, and 2TB WD My Passport SSDs drop to great prices

      By Fiza Ali · Posted

      4TB TEAMGROUP MP44Q, 2TB T-Force G50, and 2TB WD My Passport SSDs drop to great prices by Fiza Ali Prime Day may be over, but there are still worthwhile storage deals available, including discounts on SSDs for shoppers who missed the event or are looking to upgrade their storage solution. Particularly, 2TB Western Digital My Passport, 2TB TEAMGROUP T-Force G50, and 4TB TEAMGROUP MP44Q SSD are selling at great prices with up to 23% off. The 2TB TEAMGROUP T-Force G50 is an M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD with sequential read speeds of up to 5,000MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 4,500MB/s. The drive has an endurance rating of 1,300 TBW (terabytes written) and features a DRAM-less design. The company specifies a mean time between failures (MTBF) of 3 million hours. The drive includes an "ultra-thin" graphene heat spreader that helps dissipate heat without significantly increasing the drive's thickness. It also supports S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, allowing compatible software to monitor drive health and operating status. The SSD is rated for operating temperatures from 0°C to 70°C, with a storage temperature range of -40°C to 85°C. The drive is backed by a five-year limited warranty as well. 2TB TEAMGROUP T-Force G50 SSD: $269.99 (Amazon US) The TEAMGROUP MP44Q is an M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD that delivers sequential read speeds of up to 7,000MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 5,900MB/s. It uses 3D QLC NAND flash memory to provide 4TB of storage capacity for games, applications, media files, and other data. The drive has an endurance rating of 2,000 TBW and an MTBF of 1.6 million hours. The SSD features a DRAM-less design and supports TEAMGROUP's S.M.A.R.T. monitoring software, allowing users to monitor drive health, temperature, and remaining lifespan. For thermal management, the MP44Q also includes an "ultra-thin" graphene heat spreader. It is designed to operate at temperatures between 0°C and 70°C and can be stored at temperatures ranging from -40°C to 85°C. The SSD is also backed by a five-year limited warranty. 4TB TEAMGROUP MP44Q SSD: $478.99 (Amazon US) The 2TB WD My Passport SSD connects via a USB-C port using the USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface. It delivers sequential read speeds of up to 1,050MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 1,000MB/s through NVMe technology. In terms of security features, the drive includes password protection with 256-bit AES hardware encryption. The SSD is also designed to resist shock and vibration and is rated to withstand drops from heights of up to 6.5 feet. The recommended operating temperature range is 5°C to 35°C, while the non-operating temperature range is -20°C to 65°C. This drive is also backed by a five-year limited warranty. 2TB Western Digital My Passport SSD: $279.99 (Amazon US) Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Woland13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Woland13 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      492
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      225
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      147
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!