Will a magnet erase my hard drive?

[dumdnewb]

Can anyone tell me if placing a strong magnet near my hard drive will erase files from my hard drive?

I have an old computer that I want to get rid of and a friend said to clear the hard drive that I should put a strong magnet near it.
Will this work?

 

[Peter.Cort]

i think it will screw it up more then erase the files. just format the disk.

 

[carnageX]

Format...its much more simpler lol.

 

[Redmo0n]

As said by peter, it will probably just screw it up.

Me and my friends where mucking around with a pretty strong magnet at school and managed to bend the Windows logo on our graphic computers into a L shape :laughing:

Also the monitor went pwety coworz

 

[dumdnewb]

Ok, can you tell me how to format?

Please excuse my ignorance, but I really know little about computers :laughing:

As said by peter, it will probably just screw it up.

Me and my friends where mucking around with a pretty strong magnet at school and managed to bend the Windows logo on our graphic computers into a L shape :laughing:

Also the monitor went pwety coworz

But did it affect the operating system itself?

 

[Redmo0n]

Nono just screwed the colours and stuff.

Have you got the drive in your pc or is it in the other computer. Assuming it is in the other computer then here is a guide. Geek to Live: How to format your hard drive and install Windows XP from scratch

That is assuming it is XP that you want to put on it? Or do you just want a blank drive?

 

[DoubleHelix]

It didn't affect the operating system because they used the magnet on the monitor, not the hard drive.

Download a bootable CD image here which includes a utility to wipe the drive.
Active@ Kill Disk. Hard Drives Eraser. Free Download.

 

[veg1992]

KillDisk owns with formatting

but before you do this you need to make sure you have a Copy of an OS to reinstall

 

[Redmo0n]

Ofc killdisk pwns all.

Even reformatted one of my dodgey hard drives.

 

[dumdnewb]

Thanks for all the links!

But, back to the original question, will a strong magnet screw up the files if placed near the hard drive itself? Will it crash the system?
Just curious.