Will "shaking" a hard disk damage its internal components? (2024)

FAQs

Will "shaking" a hard disk damage its internal components? ›

Dropping: Be wary of throwing your backpack on the ground or hanging it from high places. Shaking: If your laptop has a mechanical hard disk drive, vigorous shaking can disrupt the components, potentially causing a loss of saved data.

If the disk is an HDD drive, it has a mechanical arm in it that moves around and has to be hovering over the correct tiny spot on one of the HDD platters to read information. Shaking such a drive could cause damage to the head and possible ruin the drive.

Vibration can cause small variations in the position of the head with respect to the track, so it can be an enemy of the proper functioning of HDD's.

Most modern hard drives are able to withstand about 60+ G while operating. So if the shock would not have damaged the shell of a raw egg you should be on the save side, even when the hard drive was working.

Physical contact or damage, heat, humidity, dust, power surges, or even time can cause hard drive failure. Dust, water, or dropping are some reasons HDDs fail, shortening their lifespan. Avoid taking your device with you when it's not needed and cleaning it helps you conserve the hard drive and the data on it.

Durability and Reliability of an SSD

An SSD is also better suited to handle drops, shakes, shocks, and everyday wear and tear making them less apt to experience data loss.

Vibration is a serious issue and an unprepared PC can be torn apart by even the smallest of vibrations over time.

Dynamic vibrations.

These are worse at high speeds, usually 50 mph and up. The faster you go the worst they get. Letting off the gas either makes no difference or it makes it worse. If letting off the gas makes it worse it usually means that there is a loose part which is rattling around when unloaded.

If the yokes are not in phase, speed fluctuations will not be canceled out. These fluctuations cause vibration, which may damage components on the engine and the Jet pump.

Shock value

When your uncle slaps you on the back, you're experiencing about 4.1 Gs of shock^*. Kicking a soccer ball will yield roughly 300 Gs. A traditional hard drive when “parked” (completely powered off) is rated to survive up to 250 Gs worth of shock over 2 milliseconds.

What is the average life span of a HDD? ›

Hard disk drives have more moving parts and are less durable and more likely to fail than their solid-state counterparts. For this reason, hard disk drives tend to last between 3–5 years. Get it repaired fast at one of our stores. Just stop in or make an appointment⎯we'll handle the rest.

HDDs are widely used for data storage in various computing devices, and are an essential component of any computer system. However, HDDs are prone to several problems, including mechanical failure and data corruption. Additionally, HDDs may produce a beeping sound when they are malfunctioning.

SSD More Reliable in Vibration Prone Environments

Tests have shown that an SSD can handle as much as 25 times more shock and vibration than an HDD without resulting in damage or data loss.

Causes. There are a number of causes for hard drives to fail including: human error, hardware failure, firmware corruption, media damage, heat, water damage, power issues and mishaps.

Head crash: a head may contact the rotating platter due to mechanical shock or other reason. At best this will cause irreversible damage and data loss where contact was made. In the worst case the debris scraped off the damaged area may contaminate all heads and platters, and destroy all data on all platters.

All of the data a hard drive holds is stored within the surface of its platters. The surface is also extremely sensitive and is literally stripped away when anything touches it. As we've said previously, a head crash is a common following a drive having been dropped.

This kind of treatment could leave you with a worn-out laptop hinge or a crack in the casing. But if your laptop has a traditional spinning hard drive instead of an SSD, tossing or shaking the computer—especially if the drive is active at the time—can cause its head to dislocate or touch the surface of the disk.

Common signs for a failing hard drive include sluggish performance, unusual noises (clicking or loud component sounds), and an increase number of corrupted files. These are textbook symptoms for the inevitably of a failing hard drive and action should be taken quickly to save your files from being lost.