Magnetic USB FOB cover?
vjp...@at.biostrategist.dot.dot.com
out at a trade show snaps on like it is magnetic.. is it?
No risk or erasing it or other media it is near?
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Meat Plow
> It seems counterintuitive that the cap to a wooden USB fob handed out at
> a trade show snaps on like it is magnetic.. is it? No risk or erasing it
> or other media it is near?
I have an 8 GB USB fob which was handed out to senior company workers
by FABRIS of Canada. It's metal and the cap seems to have a magnetic
attraction to the body of the fob. I see no problem with this as the
media is not erased by magnetism. Also the only attraction seems to be
between the fob and the cap. If you are uber paranoid, toss it in the bin.
Or keep it and keep it isolated from other magnetic media.
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vjp...@at.biostrategist.dot.dot.com
pencils.. much obliged
*+-Or keep it and keep it isolated from other magnetic media.
David Nebenzahl
> uber-obsessive.. so I did that.. I took it out of my USB box and put it with
> pencils.. much obliged
Still wondering what made you think a magnet would affect an EPROM (or
is it EEPROM?) like that in any way. Maybe you're just used to dealing
with magnetic storage media?
Now, if you took the thing with you into a MRI machine, I guess all bets
would be off, but otherwise ...
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Spehro Pefhany
vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
>It seems counterintuitive that the cap to a wooden USB fob handed
>out at a trade show snaps on like it is magnetic.. is it?
>No risk or erasing it or other media it is near?
Nobody has used floppy disks for quite some time now, and nothing else
is really vulnerable. Hard drives are not. Maybe the strip in your
credit cards if it got loose in your pocket with some cards.
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
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Meat Plow
> On 5/8/2011 11:08 PM vjp...@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com spake thus:
>
>> uber-obsessive.. so I did that.. I took it out of my USB box and put it
>> with pencils.. much obliged
>
> Still wondering what made you think a magnet would affect an EPROM (or
> is it EEPROM?) like that in any way. Maybe you're just used to dealing
> with magnetic storage media?
>
> Now, if you took the thing with you into a MRI machine, I guess all bets
> would be off, but otherwise ...
It's a specif type of EEPROM than can be addressed (read/write) by
blocks. The old EEPROM had to be erased all at once then reprogrammed.
Like the BIOS in a PC. When you update it, the addressable part is
completely erased and then written with fresh data even though it's
just adding some features and replacing some buggy code.
But you are correct. It would take a lot of EMI energy to corrupt data
on a EEPROM.
Robert Macy
> On Mon, 09 May 2011 13:58:44 -0700, David Nebenzahl wrote:
the old airport security x-rays used to 'reset' [scramble data]
eeproms ...had a friend learn the hard way on a trip to demo software
in Japan
Robert Macy
depending on the coercivity of the media, 'weak' magnetic fields won't
affect the sotrage much, at all. but those new rare-earth magnets
will do a lot of damage to the data and don't have to get very close.
Meat Plow
Yep I would consider that a substantial amount more EMI/RFI than a mere
magnetic cap on a modern flash FOB.