Faraday cages ( was Re: staticy plastic tubs ) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

20 Oct 2006

 --- Ray Arachelian <ray at arachelian.com> wrote: 
...
  aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
  Ahh, thanks. I had forgotten about Google
 (not surprising since I have been working
 8.5 hour days for the past week and only
 getting 6 hours sleep each night).
     Sounds a lot like my schedule. Are you also a
 sysadmin? :-) 

errr.. no. I work for a water company and am 
a lab technician. Among other things we test
the water to make sure it's safe to drink.

...
   I don't
like to rely too heavily on Wikipedia
 as (like alot of information online) you can't
 be sure what's right or wrong, unless someone
 knowledgeable in the subject can confirm it.
     For things that I'm familiar with Wikipedia is
 almost always correct.
 For things that I'm not familiar with, their
 external links point to
 data that agrees with it.
  So if I understand correctly, the outer casing
 of a harddrive acts as a Faraday cage? My
 (4GB) Toshiba ones I use in my Amiga 600
 have circuitry on the underside, but I suspect
 that may stop it being a Faraday cage, unless
 it's stuck onto the outside of the unit.
     The platters are very well protected by the metal
 case. There are holes
 for air, (hard drives don't like working in a vacu um
...
  or low air
 pressure) and of course holes for the control/data
 cables, so it's not a
 perfect Faraday cage, but it's close enough. 
They must be really small air holes (or well
hidden) as I never saw any when installing
the HD's

Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk