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I've had a paranoid fear that any magnet would wreck a CD/DVD.

A while back, I got a bunch of Puela Magi Madoka Magica rings and necklaces, the boxes they came in open up like a book. It has a flap down one side which suck back to the box, I know that where the flap sticks to is a magnet as the metal chain on the necklace will sometimes stick to the side of the box when I put it back in.

Currently I have all the necklaces and ring in their boxes far away from any of my games or manga, but I do need to store some in storage.

So can these magnets actually wreck CD/DVD disks or should I just be worried about my hard drives?

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    But don't forget CD's / DVD's only have a life expectancy of 25 years in absolute perfect storage conditions. Do not rely on optical media for securing family pictures and videos. – user213584 Apr 9 '13 at 8:14
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While that fact is true with floppy discs, CDs and DVDs do not suffer the same problems. When CDs and DVDs are written, they are written permanently and then sealed with a layer of plastic.

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This structure of the discs stop them from becoming warped. Extreme heat and cold on the other hand will warp the plastic and cause the disc to become unreadable.

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  • Sunlight is bad for a disk, although magnets do not matter. They are ready by light, and aluminum is not magnetic. Just adding on – Austin T French Apr 9 '13 at 1:49
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    Your picture and answer describe factory stamped discs, which are quite different from home written dye-based discs. For example, the dyes deteriorate over time. – Bob Apr 9 '13 at 9:09
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no normal magnet can damage a CD/DVD. If you have a magnet powerful enough to lift 100lbs there could be a tiny chance. Now a floppy disk is magnetic and could get damaged. The CD/DVD is physically burned into the surface of the disc in a non-magnet way. However CD/DVD still contain metal so if you had a ridiculously strong magnet there is a minute chance of damaging it.

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    Most metals aren't magnetic. Out of the commonly encountered metals, only iron, nickel and cobalt are. – Dennis Apr 9 '13 at 1:51
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Magnets will not affect a CD or DVD. In comercial pressed CD and DVD they have made pits in an aluminum layer that is simply, non magnetic.

The home versions of CDs have an alloy layer that bends at the heat of the focused light beam during recording and thus mimic pits and land that would be on the commercial pressed disk surface. Again, non magnetic.

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