Does data weigh anything?

thats like saying 10 grapes weigh more than 5 apples in some senses....aslong as the grapes are weighed in an iron basket and the apples in a morrisons bag.

you think im being silly :p

But data depends on a medium, grapes and baskets are not mutually exclusive :p but i am being a bit silly now i guess.
 
Electrons will be added or subtracted to areas of the transistors that make up the flash memory in order to set them as binary ones or zeros. Therefore, it is possible for a memory stick's weight to change depending on the data it holds. However, this will depend on the binary "pattern" of the data it holds rather than the total amount.

PK!

This works. The memory stick will have a greater mass if you fill it up with 1's. Minute mass change though x10^-19 g maybe? Whatever an electron weighs really, i think its 1.8x10^-19g i could be completely wrong though because i don't need to know any of that stuff anymore.
 
This works. The memory stick will have a greater mass if you fill it up with 1's. Minute mass change though x10^-19 g maybe? Whatever an electron weighs really, i think its 1.8x10^-19g i could be completely wrong though because i don't need to know any of that stuff anymore.

I don't know how a transistor works, where the electrons go and all that jazz, but I do know that the actual data isn't stored by electrons, it's stored by the changing of state of the cell, so in that sense a 0 and a 1 weigh the same.
 
This works. The memory stick will have a greater mass if you fill it up with 1's. Minute mass change though x10^-19 g maybe? Whatever an electron weighs really, i think its 1.8x10^-19g i could be completely wrong though because i don't need to know any of that stuff anymore.

Great theory except electrons have no mass and therefore don't weigh anything. That's physics 101 ;)

Oh and as for the OP's question. No, there is no change in mass. Data is not 'added', the patterns on the disk are just changed, a binary 1 weighs no more than a 0.
 
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