Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPod ipod vs. Magnet

L

Little Endian

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 9, 2003
761
229
Honolulu
I have a friend who brought over his dead ipod video ipod in hopes that I could fix it. The ipod died immediately after coming into contact with one of those Magnetic Accessory work lights. Apparently my friend had put his ipod into the glove box and the Magnetic light was also in the glove box. He says that the ipod was probably in contact with the magnet for less than 5 minutes.

I have so far done everything that I can think of to get the ipod running. All I get is the sad ipod icon and Contact Apple Support message. The ipod refuses to mount and Software Updater does not recognize the ipod. I can't even get OSX disk Utility to recognize the ipod. I am pretty sure the ipod is dead.

Has anyone else had an ipod destroyed by a Magnet? Could there have been mechanical damage done to the drive by the magnet? Is there a way for me to repair low level formatting that has been damaged. What disk utility if any could possibly achieve some hope.
 
Sounds terrible. You might be able to format it in disk mode, hold down menu and select until the screen disappears and then hold play and select until something comes up. If this doesn't work its probably dead, sorry.
 
If you have to apply a stronger amount of force to pull a magnet away, it's bad for anything on a computer or iPod. It will mess with the screen, the hard drive, the RAM, and quite a few other things.
 
I had this happen to me. My phone case has a magnet in it and was in my center console with my ipod. It killed my Ipod. I returned it to Apple within the 1 year warranty period and they repaired it for free. It has since happened again outside the warranty and I'm procrastinating on sending it in because i think the cost to repair will be as great as a replacement and I would prefer a new one like the nano. I believe they use flash drives and magnets will not impact performance. I suggest sending yours in to Apple for repair - its the only option.
 
same thing happened to me. i bought a case for my ipod and it has a magnet with it in order for it to lock properly. i thought that maybe it wont be harmful, of course they are not selling it. when i was about to sleep, i didnt know how it came to be but the click wheel of my ipod isnt functioning anymore and the center button. when i pressed the buttons used for resetting, it did reset but still the click wheel is non-functional, is that repairable? :(
 
acstafford said:
I had this happen to me. My phone case has a magnet in it and was in my center console with my ipod. It killed my Ipod. I returned it to Apple within the 1 year warranty period and they repaired it for free. It has since happened again outside the warranty and I'm procrastinating on sending it in because i think the cost to repair will be as great as a replacement and I would prefer a new one like the nano. I believe they use flash drives and magnets will not impact performance. I suggest sending yours in to Apple for repair - its the only option.
Click to expand...

What did you say was the problem. I had a super-duty magnet get on mine (it can hold a 15 lb. weight) and I sent it in and said that it wouldn't turn on. The y returned it the next day.
 
Busting the biggest PC myths

Magnets zap your data?

For venerable floppies, this statement holds true. We placed a 99-cent magnet on a 3.5-inch floppy for a few seconds. The magnet stuck to the disk and ruined its data.

Fortunately, most modern storage devices, such as SD and CompactFlash memory cards, are immune to magnetic fields. "There's nothing magnetic in flash memory, so [a magnet] won't do anything," says Bill Frank, executive director of the CompactFlash Association. "A magnet powerful enough to disturb the electrons in flash would be powerful enough to suck the iron out of your blood cells," says Frank.

The same goes for hard drives. 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."

Want to erase data from a hard drive you plan to toss? Don't bother with a magnet. Overwrite the data that is stored on the media instead. For flash, fill up the drive with anything, like pictures of your beloved dachshund. Unlike with magnetic media, from which experts can usually recover at least some overwritten data, once new data is written to flash media, the old data is gone forever. To overwrite the contents of a hard drive, try Eraser from Heidi Computers.
 
You actually need a fairly strong magnet to ruin a harddrive. Anything like a fridge magnet, little work light magnet, magsafe connector, etc is not gonna be strong enough.
 
I temporarily killed my 4th generation iPod a little over a year ago after letting a strong magnetic name tag come in contact with the metal back of the iPod. It was stuck in a continuous reboot cycle. iTunes said that I needed to restore the iPod, but the restore would fail after every attempt. I did not have luck with DiskUtility either.

I was able to get the iPod functional again by booting into diagnostic mode and performing the HDD Scan function. I was then able to restore the iPod with iTunes. I am not sure how or why it worked, but it is still working. I have also revived a dropped ipod with the same method.
 
I agree with the Myth post. I've had my subwoofer sitting on top of my Mac Pro since the day I bought it the first week of June. No problems. I have four drives in it now.
 
Counterfit said:
Magnets + hard drives, floppy disks, tapes = BAD.

Chances are the hard drive in it is dead. You can try to do a complete erase with Disk Utility, but I doubt it will work.
Click to expand...

What do you mean dead? I assume you mean the data is scrambled. You won't physically damage a hard drive with a magnet.
 
Counterfit said:
Magnets + hard drives, floppy disks, tapes = BAD.

Chances are the hard drive in it is dead. You can try to do a complete erase with Disk Utility, but I doubt it will work.
Click to expand...


I agree with your statement.


Also, Magnets + LCD, or screen of any type = BAD BAD BAD!
 
I screwed up this kids ipod in school the other day with an industrial magnet. They came out of an old food conveyor belt, and they were used to pulls bits of metal out of food that might have chipped/worn off in the machines that made the food. They're strong, and can lift about 45-50 lbs a piece. I also held this up to my friends old CRT monitor, and at around a foot away it causes the screen to change colors and distort. I guess that kids going to have to get over it. Your not supposed to have ipods at school, but there is no rule against industrial strength magnets (at least not yet...)

Although these magnets are able to severely corrupt a hard drive and detach connectors within the ipod (according to a local apple store) they do not affect any type of LCD screen, I've tried.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back