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View Full Version : how big a fall can a drive suffer without being damaged? (lol)

veryhumid
10-24-06, 01:53 PM
I just got a perpendicular seagate, 320GB. After I showed the bare drive to a friend (n00b), he pretty much dropped it onto a couple of magazines that were on my desk I'd say about 4", but my heart kind of stopped. It seems to be running fine. Looking at the smart data the raw error rate is listed as "watch" and a couple others close to threshold by speedfan. HDtune has different threshold values and everything is in the green as read by the program. Is my drive probably okay?

Also I found some links that say smart data from seagates causes some worry:

http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=17393
http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=20209
http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=20731
http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=16798

What do you guys think?
terran2k
10-24-06, 02:04 PM
I've seen harddrives dropped hard on the floor and still work, and its still working just fine.
Rev
10-24-06, 02:21 PM
I bet you're fine henry. Your stats were very similar to my stats (I also have a seagate perpendicular 320).

I do hope you made him clean your computer with a toothbrush for it though!
Trap05
10-24-06, 02:28 PM
Wow that's lucky keep and eye on it but since it started at all my guess is it'll be just fine. As terran2k mentioned I've dropped drives on purpose before to "see" if they would die. We're talking 4' onto concrete here and it still worked. So 4" on 2 soft pr0n mags should be nothing :)
tuskenraider
10-24-06, 02:53 PM
I dropped a hard drive about 3 ft. onto a concrete basement floor while building my brother in-law's system. It was toast and nothing a return to Best Buy didn't fix.
freakdiablo
10-24-06, 03:56 PM
I took an old seagate 80gb ide harddrive in a case to school one day. I set it on a shelf to get it out of the way, easily 4 1/2 feet high. a kid bumped it, it flew out of the case (a few screws are missing) and smashed into the ground. Im typing this using firefox thats on it now :D .
speed bump
10-24-06, 05:17 PM
I have seen Hds drop out of people hands onto the floor die but never after only dropping 4" that HD is probably just fine.
veryhumid
10-25-06, 12:20 AM
thanks everyone for getting back to me, makes me feel much better :thup:
Skunk Monkey
10-26-06, 09:54 PM
If it lands on the cat... add two more feet... ;)
nd4spdbh2
10-26-06, 10:09 PM
ya i have dropped a coupla hds... ranging from a couple inches to 4ft off my desk onto carpet.... never had any probs with it..

HECK i even opened up an old 10gb maxtor took the top off and put saran wrap on it... while i went and cut out a lexan cover.... i opened back up the saran wrap and before i put the lexan cover back on i saw some dust on the platters so .. HEY why not wipe them off with a qtip.... got the dust off put the cover on, sealed it up and it works fine. :attn:

the older drives are more forgiving i have found.
johan851
10-26-06, 10:50 PM
According to spec, that drive should take an impact force of around 350G's. You should be just fine, especially if it landed on a magazine.
K15
10-26-06, 11:51 PM
According to spec, that drive should take an impact force of around 350G's. You should be just fine, especially if it landed on a magazine.


Agreed. If we were talking about concrete then that's risky. The magazines would have absorbed a substantial amount of the force.
And let that be a lesson, never hand a hard drive to a n00b:)