Greetings,

I just wanted to let everyone know that the 7130c holster WILL wipe your laptop HDD. I was sitting on my couch and lounging while watching some TV. I decided to sync my BB with my Dell D800 laptop. So, having no place to put my BB, I placed it (magnet side down) on my laptop wrist rest directly over where my hard drive is mounted internally in my laptop. There was no thought involved, obviously. Within seconds, my system started to halt and I heard an all too familiar sound. The sound of flipped bits on an HDD. My data is GONE!

Just a word of warning... These are very strong magnets. I tested my holster by seeing if it can hold itself to my whiteboard... You bet it can!!! Quite easily too!

The kicker is that I am a professional geek! I should know better!!! GAAAH!

The Following is from an article on 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."

My guess is you had other problems and the timing was just a coincidence. The magnet in the holsters are nowhere near strong enough to do any damage especially through a laptop case.

Must be a government thing....

before we decide that the magnet wasn't strong enough... i think someone who owns a 7130 holster should press the magnet against their skin to see if it sucks the iron out of their blood cells. then we will know for sure.

I use the holster magnet to circulate the iron in my blood for health reasons.
I am the true professional geek as the holster is balancing on my head right now as I type...

If your hard drive is being erase magnetically it really shouldn't make any noise. Noise is clearly a sign of an entirely different problem with your hard drive.

Remember, corellation != causation.

I think we would all benefit from a photo of this

The noise is CLEARLY a sign of the HDD read head thrashing!!! This is not my first BBQ... I was actually using my laptop when this occurred. The contents stored in the logical partition that was in use at the time were mostly destroyed. However I was able to salvage most information from my primary logical partition by using some intense HDD bit recovery tools.

If you have ever taken a laptop apart, you'll notice that there is no protection from magnetism surrounding the HDD. The magnet in the BB 7130c holster is indeed strong enough to flip bit of data on a HDD. I dare you to try it!

Incidentally, the HDD was only one week old. As always, I stress test my components before using them in a production machine. This HDD was not failing, and it was not a coincidence.

Please read for accurate information on how magnetism is used internally in the HDD.

h t t p : / / en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk

Thanx,

The holster is still balancing on my head right...

"This is not my First BBQ" . . . perhaps you could share some of you favourite recipes with us . . . ? Maybe the hot sauce damaged your hard drive?

Sounds like we need to buy a special, Tempest-class $5,000 BlackBerry for every gubmint employee...

PS - I took the BlackBerry - inside and outside of the holster, and placed it directly over the HDD of my new HP Tablet. NOTHING...

Was your tablet PC turned on, and the BB holster magnet side down directly above the HDD? Well, maybe it stands to say that the Tablet PC is better built and/or shielded than my Dell D800.

What I do know, is that I can replicate the problem. This removes any doubt as to the cause.

All I wanted to do was warn some folks of this problem. Not create a "pissing contest."

Thanx,
= )

BTW, I can't stand BBQ sauce!

Doesn't the power supply of a computer create a small magnetic field? I think i read that somewhere. So how would a small magnet from a blackberry holster cause such a problem? I could be wrong, but it just seems ridiculous. wouldn't the magnet earase all the data off my blackberry?

Hey guys, I had this same problem of my BB holster frying all the hard drives I was around. I'd walk though my office and could hear all the HDD bit flipping and such.

I fixed that by making sure I was wearing my handy aluminum foil pirate's hat: It not only dissipates the magnetic waves created by my BB holster, but also helps reduce ALL THOSE DANG VOICES I keep hearing my head...

Wirelessly posted (Cingular 7130c: BlackBerry7130/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

The voices were probably just the HDD calling out for help.

Some appear to be predisposed to pissing contests and shrill attitudes to anything which differs from them.

Question for them: Do you leave footprints when you walk on water?

This is indeed GOOD news! I don't have nearly enough magnets on my fridge to hold up my daughters art work, so I'll just stick my BB to the 'fridge. Handy way to not lose it.

Although I just tried it and it now all my milk is gone.......

So Frank, was it you that killed Jimmy Hoffa?

Puhleeeeeeze! This is not an issue of "pissing contests", simply one of correcting patently WRONG information that was posted. Absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. Did you notice that one of the information sources quoted debunking this nonsense was a technical support engineer from a hard drive manufacturer? Additionally a well known moderator here tried to duplicate the issue with totally negative results. There's no way a BB holster magnet is going to cause data loss on a modern hard drive, the concept is simply ludicrous. Did this guy suffer data loss from his hard drive when his holster happened to be sitting there? Maybe. Does that prove in any way that it was even remotely CAUSED by the holster magnet? Nope, not at all. Finally, the original poster actually claims that the holster magnet will firmly stick the holster to a whiteboard? You can prove THAT bit of nonsense false yourself. Go try to stick your (empty) holster to a whiteboard, a refrigerator or anything else. The magnet doesn't even begin to be strong enough to do that - yes, I just tried.

I'm gunna throw the bs flag on this because I had my holster sitting on my laptop last night *7130* while I was swapping the batteries.

My singular point is that one invites respect by laying out facts in a dignified manner, rather than with an adolescent tone of 'gotcha' (unless I overlooked the FoxNews logo on this site somewhere).

Also, unless someone else has the same notebook and HDD as the OP, a comparison is apples to oranges and therefore does not hold water. Magnetic fields have been known to destroy data on HDD's, and although anecdotal, I've experienced the same some years back with a Toshiba notebook and an airport. There is really no need to pour more fuel on this.

just tried this on a dell latitude d600 which is identical to the d800 just lower specs. i tried it both with a 7130 holster and a 8700 holster...no wiped data...no clicking sounds...laptop still functioning normally.

First and last warning. Please keep your posts to a respectable level and decorum. I will not tolerate heated arguments. If you disagree with another member, then simply state so and move on. There is no need to take this to unprofessional level.


Thanks for understanding,

The Gecko