My son just put this up on his flickr....

Pretty interesting. Looks like he had access to one being replaced (I hope)...and he smashed it to see what would happen.

(he is emailing me details-- but he used to do this stuff when he was a kid, so I think this is an artistic experiment).

The note on flickr said this was a ceramic/glass hard-drive.

My boys have taken apart many.. when we started with computers we would get ones at garage sales for them to learn on and for spare parts.

I save the magnets from them as they are very strong.

I never thought of that. My son told me this was done at his job.
He works for a software company and they were fixing some of their units.

I have 4 quarter sized neodymium magnets I bought 2 yrs ago,
for my pain control. I paid $1 each! I did buy them from a computer supplier!

How big are the ones in the computer?

I don't wear my magnets when on computer. I wonder how close they have to be to futz up a computer...do you know, Stagger? These quarter sized ones are really strong. They will jump across 6in to any metal surface or another mag. Getting them apart is a difficult task too. I cover mine with medical plastic tape with overlaps, and use those to help.

These are about 1 inch square and 1/8 inch thick mounted onto a bigger piece of metal. There are very strong and I have tried wearing them taped to my feet at night, but have not recieved any benefit from doing this. I use them for different hobby experiments.
Lanny

Relief from pain with magnets in my experience has to do with a few things.

1) typically only one side works. I think it is the S pole to the skin.
The other pole may be stimulating and if magnets don't work or make nerves more active just reverse them.

2) I don't know if the attached metal makes a difference. But one has to have magnets that have discrete poles.

3) Placement is a factor. Try putting them on your ankle instead of on the bottoms of the feet. Catching the nerve higher up, is also more effective with Lidoderm patches.

Brian over at PN and I have used magnets for quite a long time.
I use mine for other kinds of pain, knee, back and hip.
Search magnets over at PN to find the posts.
With the big huge ones, I find 20min to an hour adequate, daily.

When I had the 3T MRI scan- I automatically faced north when I stood up. :-))

Gad - how funny!