Check this thread out, it does something similar with LEDs. Some of it may apply for your idea.

Basically you put a huge spiral coil under a blotter. In the old days with floppies and VCRs this would be a horrible idea, but nowdays everything is optical.

 

Hehe nice on SgtWookie! iBrick hehe!

I guess I am willing to sacrifice my iPod for the sake of knowledge and experimentation. Do I have the go signal SgtWookie? Will this work in your opinion?

Bill: Where's the link?

 

Hehe nice on SgtWookie! iBrick hehe!

I won't take credit for the term. I heard it on a tech talk radio program that was referring to people turning their iPhones into iBricks, which I thought was quite clever.

I guess I am willing to sacrifice my iPod for the sake of knowledge and experimentation. Do I have the go signal SgtWookie? Will this work in your opinion?

You too, can have your very own iBrick.
Look at the iPod Classic specifications:
http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/specs.html
Note where it says:

160GB hard drive

That implies magnetic media, which would be wiped clean by what you wish to attempt.

You will really, really kill your iPod if you try the inductive charging method.

 

I hadn't thought of the hard disk angle, as more and more MP3 players use solid state drives.

The problem is long term, back when floppies were the thing you put on on a power cord and leave it it would corrupt the data, but a few minutes is no big deal.

I've had super strength magnets stick to hard drive cases with no bad results, but I suspect long term it taint good. Hard drives are pretty well shielded, but damage of this kind is cumulative.

 

SgtWookie: My iPod does not have a harddrive; it uses flash memory instead. I don't think it will be affected by the magnetic field, no?

 

I hadn't thought of the hard disk angle, as more and more MP3 players use solid state drives.

The problem is long term, back when floppies were the thing you put on on a power cord and leave it it would corrupt the data, but a few minutes is no big deal.

I've had super strength magnets stick to hard drive cases with no bad results, but I suspect long term it taint good. Hard drives are pretty well shielded, but damage of this kind is cumulative.

Interesting.

I have seen people do a variety of un-good things with floppy disks and other magnetic storage media.

I bought my first computer in late 1977. It used a cassette deck for program/data storage.

I went to work for a high-tech company some years later, and I was amazed by the sheer number of ways that people were destroying the data on their disks.

I actually saw someone stick a floppy disk to a white board using a magnet.

One department had a Wang word processor with huge 8" floppy disks. The secretary complained of frequent data loss. The reason became apparent when she stuck a label on a disk, rolled the disk into the carriage, and typed the table of contents on the label.

I wrote a program by request for a senior staff person with a Doctorate in Physics to graphically display the coverage of a radar system were it to be used as a missile defense system, and saved it to a 3-1/2" disk. The next day he complained that the program would not run. He'd fastened a note to the disk using a paper clip from the secretary's magnetic paper clip holder.

I went to a co-worker's place for a visit. He had a Masters' degree in Physics, and was responsible for input on EMI/EMF projects for several important defense contracts. He wanted to show me his Atari/Amiga/Commodore computer (I don't remember which anymore) and the cool games it could play. He rolled open his floppy storage compartment (his bed's headboard) and I spotted a real genuine old-fashioned Bell Telephone type bell-ringing telephone handset with the rotary dial.

"Dude, is that a working phone?" It rang an instant later, cutting off his reply.
After he got off the phone, I asked him if he'd considered what the EMI/EMF from the phone was doing to his floppy disks.

I got the "deer in the headlights" look.

Even really smart people do really dumb things on occasion.

He rolled open

 

With flash memory your should be able to use the inductive method.

My brother was early IT support for a hospital (remember XT). He kept getting odd calls for strangeness, like when her computer died, and all the backups too. This was an XT computer with a floppy bootup. She had just received a load of refrigerator magnets, and had casually tossed them on her disk. More than half went into her diskette box, some were sticking on the sides of the diskettes.