I was wondering if the little internal PC speaker can damage a hard drive because of its magnetic field. I have an old 486/Pentium case and the speaker is mounted right under the 3.5" drive bays. Seeing as the back of the speaker is magnetic, wouldn't my hard drive be adversely affected by it if I mount it too close?

Maybe (but maybe not) - - it can't really be compared to a 50 Watt JVC sub woofer, field strength vs distance is governed by the inverse square rule You could experiment and see I suppose, or just move it elsewhere if you're concerned - regardless, I doubt if 'damage' is possible, the potential risk would be data corruption I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

That's what I meant, data corruption. It seems unlikely to me that PC manufacturers would mount the speaker there if it was going to ruin your hard drive, but...

Stranger things have been known to happen, but I suspect the risk is pretty minimal, as those speaker magnets are relatively weak, and strength drops off dramatically with distance. If, over time, you encounter an unusal number of disk errors, then that may support your concern Now, I've got some chunks of Alnico that can suck the picture off of a TV screen - - those would be a different story ; ) I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

People get too worried about magnets and their hard disks. PC WORLD Article: "The only magnets powerful enough to scrub data from a drive platter are laboratory degaussers or those used by government agencies to wipe bits off media. "In the real world, people are not losing data from magnets," says Bill Rudock, a tech-support engineer with hard-drive maker Seagate. "In every disk," notes Rudock, "there's one heck of a magnet that swings the head." I have pulled apart an old broken hard disk before and that magnet that swings the heads is damn strong. I was able to lift up a chair with a metal frame with it and no other support. I wouldn't worry about that magnet in the speaker if I were you. Some people also worry about the long term effects, but the magnet in the hard disk is always there so I doubt there are any long term effects at all. A link to that article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,1... Mattwizz3 : ) Sempron 2600+ @ 2.2GHz 1Gb DDR400 Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe 2X 200GB SATA 80Gb IDE 256Mb MSI 6800 Ultra Vista Home Basic

Thanks for the info. I guess I should overcome my fear and mount the HD next to it. :)