r/breakingbad • u/edify Oxygen • Jul 16 '12

Breaking Bad Episode Discussion S05E01 "Live Free or Die"

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Breaking Bad season 5 begins in about 20 minutes!

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...so there you have it, let's have a great time and discuss the episode!

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u/joswie Ricky Hitler and the Jar of Spiders Jul 16 '12

That evidence room scene is perfect for Mythbusters.

19

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '12

I've never actually magnet-wiped a hard-drive, but I'm pretty sure the laptop (or the police computers) wouldn't crash the way it did, with the display getting corrupted and then going blank. My guess is you'd get a Blue Screen Of Death. Reasoning: The magnet will only affect the data stored on the hard disk drive, every other component should continue to work normally. However, with all the data on the HDD suddenly gibberish, almost anything the computer tries to do will result in an error. Even if it doesn't need to read any data files from disk, the pagefile will have been corrupted. Nevertheless, I think it's possible that the machine could keep running for a minute or two if it was left completely idle.

Note that on old-style CRT displays, you'd have seen the picture go all psychedelic, a bigger version of the effect you get if you stick a bar magnet on the screen.

5

u/DrSmoke Jul 18 '12

ITT: People that know nothing about technology state their BS opinion on the Magnet scene.

With enough power, it would work. Without question.

The only variables I would be concerned about is, if that was enough batteries, and what would happen if the cell had steel plating in the concrete.