Regarding Magnets and the Lowrance Elite-4 HDI

Thought some of you may want this information:

I posed this question to Lowrance:
I have a magnetic mounting system for my transducer so as to use on different kayaks & boats you can see this at http://www.noyaks.com/fishfindermounts.html It is suggested on a forum if the magnet gets close to the Elite-4 head/screen, it could cause damage. Is that possible? I know flash memory is safe from magnetism, but do not know how your electronics operate.

It took a while, but Lowrance Technical answered:
We would normally recommend a 3ft clearance between any magnets and the head unit to ensure that there isn’t any interference with the GPS signal when in operation. Outside of that I cannot think of anything else that could be affected; with the unit in question.
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FYI; do a Google search and you’ll find out newer computer systems are a bit different than older systems. Today’s hard drives use a magnet on the arm that reads from the spinning disc inside. I read it would take a magnet strong enough to suck iron out of your body in order to cause problems with a newer computer. 

Flash drives are immune to magnets in the same way. If you happen to have a Solid State Drive SSD (the newest) they’re based upon flash memory and are also immune.

So, my new kayak will use the magnetic transducer mounting. No holes to drill except one for the lead from the permanently mounted Gel Cell battery which will be inside the hull and I’ll pack the transducer mount along with the head so as to make forgetting one or the other very difficult; might forget both though.