steckner@lri.uwo.ca (Michael Steckner) (04/01/91)
I am working at a Hospital with a Magnetic Resonance Imager. This device uses a very strong magnet (15000 gauss, earth's magnetic field is 0.5 gauss, approximately) which can easily wipe out any magnetic media which comes with 15 feet of the magnet. Our backup tapes (9 track, 6250 bpi tapes) are stored in a separate room where the magnetic field strength has been measured to be 7 gauss. We seem to be finding that many of our tapes cannot be read yet our service people claim that the tape drive is working properly. Does anyone know how strong a magnetic field a tape can withstand and not suffer data degradation? Any help on this question would be appreciated. I realize this is an esoteric question and I really don't know which group to post this to, so I have posted it to the following: sci.physics sci.med.physics comp.unix.admin comp.unix.wizards alt.cd-rom