Magnet damage to Macbook Pro I was an idiot and put a magnet on the right hand side of my trackpad on my MacBook Pro! I took the magnet off quickly, after realizing what I had done, but it seems I was too late! 

The laptop started making a weird sound so I switched it off, thinking it was the best thing to do. After a minute or two, I turned on the laptop again and it started up but with a folder with a question mark in the middle of the screen. I turned it off and tried again, but the same image came up.

I'm almost certain I've wiped it, but obviously I'm no genius. Is there any way to fix it without taking the laptop to Apple?
Unfortunately, the magnet damaged the data on internal hard disk, which is located near the trackpad inside your MacBook Pro. Data on standard Hard Disks is stored on the disk using patterns of magnetization.

You will have to erase and restore from a backup if you have one.