[avian]

> There's no protection against magnetic fields

I agree that floppies were all but reliable in practice. But I suspect sensitivity to magnetic fields was largely a myth. I did some experiments back in the day with some permanent magnets and 3.5" disks. As I remember it was pretty hard to make the disk unreadable with those. Granted they were probably much weaker than what is available today (neodymium must have been terribly exotic back then). I was much less afraid after that that some carelessly positioned magnet will wipe out my floppy library.

[mikeash]

I agree. I tried to erase 3.5" and 5.25" floppies with refrigerator magnets as a kid, and they did nothing.

Magnetism is an inverse-cube law, and the write head is really close to the disk. Even if you hold your magnet to the floppy casing, you have a hard fight against the inverse cube.

[pluma]

I remember having corrupted disks that I had kept too close to the speakers and CRT, but I can't say whether the corruption was actually caused by the magnetic fields or not.