I was reading about a massive solar flare that happened in 1859. It got me thinking.

 

Talk is that solar flares can destroy our power grid, and also computers.

 

But would it be able to destroy a disconnected hard drive? A hard drive is essentially in a metal box, which acts as a Faraday's cage?

 

I have a backup of most of my data on a harddrive that I don't need anymore. It's therefore disconnected from everything, and it just lies in a drawer. Is that any guarantee? Or should I really go for optic storage (CDs) to make sure I don't lose anything from a solar flare?

 

Next week: planning to protect my data from an asteroid crash.

GaAs technolgy is supposed to have a high imunity to these sort of effects, perhaps a Mil-spec SD or USB flash drive/cards will be good too.

could store your disk in a metal box or filing cabinet. ground it too for extra safety.

 

but i think the main damage comes from massive voltages generated in the massive antennas we like to call powerlines. which cause powersurges and stuff. so any equipment switched off should survive.

I back up everything important on a CD along with other methods. Not sure about Solar flare damage but a close lightning strike can damage an unplugged computer.