Why do magnets erase tapes

Unless, of course, you WANT to erase these tapes. Then, magnets become very useful tools. Reasons to erase There are two big reasons why you may want to consider erasing your tapes. The first is to make your tape seem new. If you have an almost full VHS or audio cassette, the quality of your next recording will take a hit if you're storing new information on top of older information.

However, if you erase your tape using neodymium magnets , you won't have to worry about recording over existing footage or audio, as traces of it will be gone. The second big reason to clear tapes is if you plan to throw them away. If your VHS cassettes have nothing more on them than old TV shows, you have nothing to worry about if you're tossing them in the trash. However, if you recently converted your home movies to DVD, you may want to think twice before throwing away these memories in their original format.

All times are GMT The time now is AM. Contact Us - Tapeheads. All rights reserved, no use of any element incorporated into this site without express written permission. How strong of a magnet to damage tape? User Name. Remember Me? Mark Forums Read. Open Reel Tape Media All aspects of tape itself; quality, characteristics, experiences, use and storage.

Find all posts by PlayingInTheBand. Find all posts by vince Lance Lawson Serious Tapehead. Join Date: Jun Posts: 7, Find all posts by Lance Lawson. Join Date: Jan Location: Canada, eh? Posts: 1, Find all posts by Sawtooth.

Knasty Serious Tapehead. Join Date: Jun Posts: Find all posts by Knasty. Velktron Dream tape never ends. Find all posts by Velktron. RWise Serious Tapehead. Find all posts by RWise. Join Date: Dec Location: Cornwall. Posts: Find all posts by nestbox. Ghitulescu Banned. This means that we can think about a magnet as pointing in a certain direction.

We might even draw an arrow on the magnet pointing from the south to the north pole. Cassette tapes and floppy disks contain a lot of small magnets. Initially all of the magnets point in the same direction, but when music is recorded on a tape or a computer file is recorded on a disk, some of the magnets are changed so that they point in the opposite direction.

The pattern of alternating magnets is used to store the information, and a cassette player is basically a translator that converts the pattern into music. Likewise, a disk drive is a translator that converts the magnetic pattern into an electronic form that the computer can understand.