I read both yes and no. Can anyone point to an authoritative source on the real answer?
Thanks!

From a personal experience with some of the strongest magnets, No.

- Harddrives, Yes
- Floppy Disks, Yes
- CD's, No (Safest Means of Storage, unless it gets scratched.)
- Flashdrives, If they use a RAM-Type chip, then usually No. However, if you use the flashdrives with microharddrives in it, then yes.

I know harddrives aren't usually affected by magnets, because I had a Hard drive magnet inside my pocket, and a flash drive in the same pocket for almost 3 hours!
It still worked just fine, with no loss of data.

But hey, it may be different for others.

Hehe I just found an old one I don't use anymore, and I've got a fairly strong magnet that will pick up 200 pounds...

I think I'll do a little experiment :)

Flash drives don't use magnetic media so it shouldn't affect it.

I rubbed all sides of it with the big mag... and it did not harm the files in any way. Thanks guys.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/116572/busting_the_biggest_pc_myths.html

Lol im doing a science fair project and i need some help so can anybody bo of assistance

My laptops hard rive got screwed because I was cleaning a bit of dust with a fish tank magnet :( the humiliation and the jackass feeling