Powered Speakers and Memory Cards

At a wedding on Saturday I had a DJ advise me to avoid holding my camera near any of his powered speakers as he said they would potentially erase our memory cards.

This was the first I had ever heard of this but naturally didn't take any chances. Has anyone else come across the same situation? It almost makes sense.

I'm no electrical engineer but I'd be willing to bet that anything that could damage your memory card would probably create havoc with other electronics in your camera and the IS and USM in the lens as well?

However, I seriously doubt if thats the case.

I was incredibly sceptical but who is going to take the risk?

The amount of power required to scramble the bits on a memory card would definitely reek havoc with other electronics.

If you were using Microdrives, and laid one right on the speaker, maybe. But flash RAM cards, no - they're safe.

Has anyone here every tried to erase a CF card with a magnet? Are they even written magnetically with a head like a hard (or floppy) disk?

So maybe someone with a microdrive in their camera might have to worry?

Jon, ya beat me to the Enter button.

WaltA wrote in post #5690325
Has anyone here every tried to erase a CF card with a magnet? Are they even written magnetically with a head like a hard (or floppy) disk?

So maybe someone with a microdrive in their camera might have to worry?

Jon, ya beat me to the Enter button.

Magnets won't do anything to a CF card. Flash memory isn't written to or read with a magnetic head like HDDs, floppy discs, and similar media, so there's nothing magnetic for a magnet to affect in a CF (or similar) card.

Just looked up how flash memory works... quantum tunneling, hot electron injection, on-chip charge pumps! Anyways, no don't worry about it.

bsaber wrote in post #5693685
Just looked up how flash memory works... quantum tunneling, hot electron injection, on-chip charge pumps! Anyways, no don't worry about it.

Makes it sound like the card may damage the speakers.