  Short-range columnar defects essentially influence the magnetic properties of
a mesoscopic superconducting disc.They help the penetration of vortices into
the sample, thereby decrease the sample magnetization and reduce the upper
critical field. Even the presence of weak defects split a giant vortex state
(usually appearing in a clean disc in the vicinity of the transition to a
normal state) into a number of vortices with smaller topological charges. In a
disc with a sufficient number of strong enough defects vortices are always
placed onto defects. The presence of defects lead to the appearance of
additional magnetization jumps related to the redistribution of vortices which
are already present on the defects and not to the penetration of new vortices.
