>>We are designing a device that includes some relatively strong magnets. The device is about the size of a cigaret pack and is connected to a laptop using USB. I am afraid that at the end of the day when I throw the device in my computer bag along with my laptop and my wallet that the magnet will de-magnetise my debit cards and erase my harddrive (or even flip a couple of bits).
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>Some devices use exotic rare-earth permanent magnets to purposely erase (degauss) hard drives and other media (
http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/storage/degaussers/ ). If your magnets are in that category it's probably not a good idea to get either hard drives or mag stripe cards anywhere near them.
Al,
Thank you very much for the link. That is great information.
Einar
Semper ubi sub ubi.