When are they going to get back to the Gale story line? Still waiting for him to wake up from his coma....

it seems you dont know what you are talking about

Ill just add one more thing, unless you physically destroy every platter on a drive "some" data is generally recoverable.

In other words if you took your drive dropped it in water then smashed it on the ground, I could, in theory get data off of it. It might bot be "everything" but you could.

back to the magnets , you need a pretty powerful magnet to really erase a hdd. The way mine and most company's "erase" data is to format it overwrite the disks, re format ,re overwrite and reformat.

jmakin just stop and watch the show, you're making a fool out of yourself.

This was so great. I could watch Mike be frustrated forever.

Yeah SSD for the loss. But they weren't super common in laptops back in this show's time frame, and they didn't come in very large storage capacities in laptops either. I actually have a similar workbook at work that I got in '09, and it's SSD is only 75G. You were shelling out a lot of cash if you wanted 150G, and I'm not sure laptop SSDs were even available that were much bigger than that. Assuming you're keeping a few days worth of video surveillance from multiple cameras on your drive, you'd want at least 500G.

Really we're just going to have to give the show a little leeway here. If Gus was super anal about data retention, he'd have a server farm for managing all his back ups. He wouldn't have a single laptop hard drive and that's it.

And yeah, sorry bro, lol if you watched that whole ep thinking walt's plan was physical destruction. Physical destruction of data is extremely difficult and walt would have never thought using a magnet to propel it into a wall would be effective in that regard. The plan was data corruption via magnetism.

Yup.

And I feel like after Walt saw that- he wanted to add more power to things so he could really **** **** up just to **** **** up- which he did later on when he cranked the magnet up to 11.

You guys are ridiculously bad at watching TV. It was never about sucking the laptop against a wall to destroy it and Walt's brother in law never ever thought Gus was Heisenberg.

Its hugely overthinking it to consider that they didnt successfully wipe that laptop.

It's really obvious from his motioning that he was envisioning the laptop flying across the room and smashing into the wall.

I believe the laptop fizzling was a visual cue to the viewer that he was within range of the magnet. "That did it." That did what? wiped the HD? At no point do they make any mention of this, so you're telling me they expect every viewer to have heard of this wive's tale? Why don't they explain it at any point?

Like econophile said, likely next episode this will be resolved in 1 line, but I'm just saying from the way it's shot it's very clear the physical destruction of the laptop was the goal the whole time, especially driving it home at the end with the image of the partially broken laptop. I'm also saying it's very vaguely and crappily written. That's all.

the drive is now a moot , the bank accounts is what will be the trail, imo the security camera /laptop was to help bring Mike back into the fold as a player not just a man with a vendetta.

wat

I mean if you wanted to break the HD on a laptop, functionally throwing it around when it's off wouldn't even be a good way to do it- right? Ruins the laptop- but what would you really have to do to damage the HD in that setting?

This was just very clearly about use the magnet to wipe the data on the HD.

doublefacepalmcuzonefacepalmisntenough.jpg

the earlier episodes with caper elements (e.g., A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal, Sunset) seemed like consequences of the main characters' bad decisions and led to further complications.

after the season 4 finale, the video camera did not seem to be a burning question in many viewers' minds. aside from resolving this issue, the current caper doesn't appear to lead to anything other than discovering the bank account info which could have happened in many other ways. time will tell whether there are other unforseen ramifications.

from other threads in other shows, I know you aren't a ******.

so stop trolling

Okay well said. You've won me over.

How the bank account will lead back to walt is what I wonder as well. Something to do with marked bills, I imagine.

I'm really not trolling, just to ME, as a viewer with an above average knowledge of HD's and how computers work, it was not readily apparent to me that they intended the viewer to assume that the laptop was completely destroyed, or that the magnet wiping the HD was the plan all along. I suppose someone with no knowledge will say, "Oh, screen cracked, game over man." and someone with partial knowledge will go, "Oh, hard drive wiped by magnet, game over."


Oh well.

this.

I'm really confident you're way off base here. It never occurred to me that they were trying to physically break the computer. Now that you mentioned it, it goes from nonexistant chance to ever so slight chance that's what they were getting at.

There's a gif posted above that is the most direct evidence (as well as guard's computer in police station) but I think it was explicitly implied in other ways, too.

Really? you would want to drill a hole through the drive 3 places.
A Fire to melt the disk would be best if we are talking physical damage.

Most people hold the belief that a "strong magnet" will wipe out a hard drive instantly.

Any chance that the account numbers on the photo were not Gus's?

Maybe Saul, or Walts somehow? Perhaps tying into the 600k that Skyler gave Ted?

Also

The wives tale that's true? Yes- I do think it's fair to assume that most reasonable humans are aware that magnets can do damage to electronics.

My dad used to have a powered one specifically for erasing reel to reel tape in his radio days, it was kinda awesome.

most likely tied into the madrigal company from which gus/gale purchased the equipment for the lab

Don't see how that would make sense. (edit: what Hate Machine says about Madrigal could make sense, but that's still a direct tie to Gus. That account doesn't belong to one of our other major characters or anything.)

There is so much fail itt right now. There is 0% chance they were going for physical destruction. It was obviously wipping the hard drive. You do realize a hard drive will work even if the screen is smashed! You can actually get information off a nearly destroyed HD. The only option is wipping it.