Tape and disk drives next to computer monitor, safe or not?

[VICMODEM]

Hi! I have my commodore VIC 20 attached to my computer monitor and so the most convenient place to put my tape drive and disk drive would be next to the monitor. The thing is, there was a time when I put my floppy disks next to my monitor and they became kinda messed up because of it.... Is it only the degaussing coil that's dangerous to magnetic storage mediums or can the monitor damage them even when it's simply running and not degaussing? What I would do is when I open my computer monitor I'd remove any disks and tapes from their drives and when it's on I'd put them back in... What I also don't know is, can the monitor mess up with the heads inside the drives?

 

[Rybags]

Magnetic fields that vary are the things to avoid - CRTs tick that box, speakers to a lesser degree, the permanent magnet is fairly powerful but the electromagnetic force of the cone action is somewhat lesser.

But plenty of people have done that setup for years, probably not worth worrying about, there should be sufficient distance such that any field near the magnetic media is too weak to do any damage.

 

If you get unexplained errors then think about moving the peripherals.

Edited September 19, 2014 by Rybags

[Osgeld]

CRT is much more sensitive to magnetism than tape (seriously I have had 120 volt electromagnet tape erasers that took 3-4 sessions before I had to just record them with no input) stupid fridge magnet from an insurance company with a calender on it wonked out my gen one NEC multisync forcing me to get out the degaussing coil

Edited September 20, 2014 by Osgeld

[Rybags]

Seems I misread the OP a bit... yes, you want to keep magnets away from CRTs too... not only can they upset the scanning to the point of altering colour and image sometimes to the point of being persistent and needing degause, but a powerful magnet too close can even distort the shadow mask/aperture grill to the point of making it permanently useless.

[Osgeld]

I think we both did

 

yes a monitor with a degaussing feature will emit a strong EM pulse, which cant be good, retro monitors do not have that, it was kind of a standard feature on CRT's back in the late 90's till LCD's took over

 

tapes are also magnetically more resistant than disk drives cause of the bit density, big fat chunky bits on long stretches vs tightly packed bits on a film

[Rybags]

Bottom line - the old school magnetic media stands up much better than the more modern stuff. Higher densities = more prone to data loss, and high density also often meant thinner media coating and less power used to induce the flux transitions.

[Charlie_]

I thought you were not supposed to put things on the left side of a CRT monitor because that is where the fly-back transformer is normally located.