Dropped hard drive

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EnderW

[H]F Junkie
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Tonight I dropped one of my 500GB VelociRaptor drives about 4 feet onto a tile floor. First time I've dropped a hard drive in 12 years of building computers. The drive powers on fine and is still recognized in the RAID-0 array. Anyone else have a similar experience? Did the hard drive last?
 
In the off condition they can withstand something like 70 g I would not worry it would take a bigger fall than that to week the heads if you did not damage the control board it should be fine.
 
Most of the drives I have seen dropped wouldn't power up afterwards. The ones that did, seemed to be ok, but I would suggest using WD's diagnostic software to check for errors.
 
I've dropped a 7200 rpm onto a carpet covered concrete floor and it lasted for years. Dropped a 36 GB scsi drive onto the edge of a rack about 5' down and it never started again. Back up the array and replace that thing imho.
 
Lunas said:
In the off condition they can withstand something like 70 g I would not worry it would take a bigger fall than that to week the heads if you did not damage the control board it should be fine.
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4 feet onto a tile floor is closer to infinite Gs than 70, though. The only thing that can help is some minor elasticity of the floor, and if the drive can deform a bit to absorb some of the impact. I have a drive like that with a corner showing the fall, but working fine.
 
EnderW said:
Tonight I dropped one of my 500GB VelociRaptor drives about 4 feet onto a tile floor. First time I've dropped a hard drive in 12 years of building computers. The drive powers on fine and is still recognized in the RAID-0 array. Anyone else have a similar experience? Did the hard drive last?
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Brand new Seagate 120GB. 4ft drop on to a hardwood floor. Click of death on power up. :(
 
Aesma said:
4 feet onto a tile floor is closer to infinite Gs than 70, though. The only thing that can help is some minor elasticity of the floor, and if the drive can deform a bit to absorb some of the impact. I have a drive like that with a corner showing the fall, but working fine.
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Apparently you do not know how gravity and velocity work... 4 feet and the time it takes to free fall that far in about .2 seconds it would not have time to reach terminal velocity so a drop from that height would be roughly about 100 g not infinite and i just looked up g ratings on modern drives most now go 60g while operational and 350g while off.

that said a hard drive is still a precision instrument and who knows the damage caused by one particular fall.
 
This is not really about gravity and velocity, though. It's about the contact at some speed between a hard object and the hard ground. The deceleration is instantaneous since there is nothing to absorb some of the energy (like a carpet would), that's why I mentioned infinite Gs.
 
Aesma said:
This is not really about gravity and velocity, though. It's about the contact at some speed between a hard object and the hard ground. The deceleration is instantaneous since there is nothing to absorb some of the energy (like a carpet would), that's why I mentioned infinite Gs.
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There is still a finite deceleration infinite g would mean it had infinite velocity to decelerate from.

there is a mathematical formula to figure out the exact number of g experienced in a 4 foot fall the 100 g I said was for a 1 meter fall as per the hard drive durability test I pulled it from.
 
I think the drive sled it was in somehow softened the blow. It didn't make the awful sound you'd expect when it hit the ground. I've had no trouble out of the drive so far.
 
Dropped a brand new 4TB Hitachi still in its box when carrying one-too many HDDs. Maybe 3-4 foot drop? Don't remember...Wouldn't spin up properly after that. I would not count on any HDD lasting if it's dropped.
 
Generally speaking, a drive that is powered down should have it's read/write heads in the parking position. It can handle some pretty severe impacts in that context. What you don't want is for the drive to be powered down improperly, so that the read/write heads are still hovering over the internal discs. Then when you drop it, the read/write heads slam into the disc causing physical damage. Some modern drives actually have internal capacitors that store enough power to put the heads in the parking position even if the drive is powered down improperly.
 
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