How fragile is a HDD?

[grs]

I'm having trouble with a 10GB Maxtor HDD, I found a PIII in a skip yesterday brought it home, works great, loaded Linux Xubuntu on it and all was well. I then was tinkering around inside the PC and I had to remove the HDD, it came out smothly with no trouble, I placed it down and after a while put it back in and now the PC can't see the HDD. Just says "Operating System Not Found" Maybe I have the ribbon cable in wrong, it should be red side to pin 2 (next to power supply and jumpers)

[Jon]

I've destroyed a few with static in my time. Have to watch what you touch on the bottom of them sometimes.

[SeasonalEclipse]

Check the jumpers! If the little pin thing fell out then that could be why. If it doesnt have a pin on the jumpers then its probably set for cable select which means I believe you put the IDE connector at the end on the ahrd drive.. for master.. I beleive..

[grs]

Sorry, false alarm, the ribbon cable wasn't in right.

[Jon]

:clap:

[grs]

Also, I have a Iomega 250MB Zip drive. When the HDD wasn't working I tried reinstalling Xubuntu, the HDD wasn't see but the Zip drive was (theres a disk in it which I haven't been able to eject yet!) Now I have the HDD working, I can't see the Zip drive in Xubuntu's file manager, why not? Can I remove a zip disk with the power off?

[Mr.Guvernment]

i have dropped some HD's and they still work!

[doublejack]

i have dropped some HD's and they still work!

HD's can survive many G's of force, especially if they are off. The read/write head is programmed to park in a safe area while the drive is shutting down. It's way easier to kill a drive with electricity (static or otherwise) than it is to kill one by dropping it.

[Mr.Guvernment]

especially laptops drives!

[emceepecks]

I've dropped my iPod on cement so many times because I'd forget it's on my lap as I get out of the car. After all the abuse, it still works fine. I'd be more concerned about static.

[kyleslater]

i have dropped some HD's and they still work!
Yeah... I've dropped them about 4 feet onto cement and chipped the cement and still had them working... Only way I found to destroy them for sure was to take them and purposely smash them on a table or something flat so that the platters would shatter...
Oh wait... You were trying to find out if the hdd was still okay not how to kill them... :bang head

[spiritedandy]

glad all ok

ive had water dripping on hdd so bad that you could shake it out !!!

few hours on radiator and all was well

[doublejack]

Yeah... I've dropped them about 4 feet onto cement and chipped the cement and still had them working... Only way I found to destroy them for sure was to take them and purposely smash them on a table or something flat so that the platters would shatter...
Oh wait... You were trying to find out if the hdd was still okay not how to kill them... :bang head

Many platters don't shatter easily. Sometimes they are made out of glass and will break, but usually it's aluminum. When you kill a drive by slamming it down, the damage that causes failure is likely to the read/write head.

[T'wolves]

My dad was nervous about throwing out our old HDD when they bought the laptop...so I eased his ming with the sledge hammer. They can't take that many G's...lol.