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I stored my portable external hard drives next to some tape cassettes. I believe hard drives are meant to last an average of five years but some of my files which were perfectly fine before became corrupted and unreadable.

I've had the hard drives for 1-2 years. Could the magnetized tape in cassettes possibly be damaging the hard drives and the data? The drives are Western Digital My Passport SE.

fixer1234
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tora6
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1 Answers1

5

Right inside your hard drive there are a pair of VERY powerful, strong rare earth magnets. Your hard drive also has a metal case which magnetically shields the insides. Its significantly more likely that your tapes would be corrupted long before the hard drives, with their plastic cases and exposed magnetic ribbons.

Chances are there's a problem elsewhere.

Keltari
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Journeyman Geek
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