How much of a drop can a hard drive survive?

I was lifting my laptop (acer 6920) up on one end to remove the battery when it was idle in vista. the end was about 1-2 inches above the table when it slipped from my fingers and hit the table.

what are the chances of something breaking? everything seems to be working perfectly fine at the moment but im kinda paranoid about these types of things, especially with hard drives. i ran a quick SMART test in WD tools and it passed...

 

Each HDD has a specific shock resistance....(Look up the HDD's datasheet)
Generally, say 200G -> dropped from more than 5" when the HDD is operational....Broke !!

 

I found this
0.00459 g @ 10-500 Hz (operating) / 0.05102 g @ 10-500 Hz (non-operating)

but I have no idea what it means... lol

also if the computer is idle displaying the desktop, is the hard drive considered operating? i guess with vista it could go either way with all the stuff going on in the background...

 

The 200g limit is only when non operating.

 

what do the specs for my drive mean?
0.00459 g @ 10-500 Hz (operating) / 0.05102 g @ 10-500 Hz (non-operating)

 

well if I look at a hard disk wrong it breaks... In my old acer It slipped out of my hands and fell down 2 flights of concret stairs and it survived... until the mainboard burn up 1 1/2 months later...

 

WOW! That is crazy! too bad about the mainboard though
Well everything appears to be working fine, I just ran HDTune, got 62max, 31min, 49avg...
I'm just really really paranoid when it comes to hard drives

ive had an external hard drive fail which i believe may have been caused by it tipping over kinda hard when it was placed upright...
although ive also had drives fail on their own inside a desktop...

im just not a big fan of hard drives, haha

 

I wasn't there but what you describe does not sound that bad. Not a large drop HDD was not active (idle not accessing) at the time and HDD is showing no signs of damage.

I would not worry. That said always back up your files. If it is going to break worry does little.

But I am a guy who has had 3 notebooks over 10 years all still work and never had a HDD failure?

 

Nope. The Non-Operating Shock Tolerance for almost all drives is a 1000G. I know the 7K320 has a good shock tolerance of 400G Operating (Probably the highest among mobile HDDs), whereas the WD Black, etc have it in the 250G Range....

That is the vibration tolerance, not the shock tolerance. It is a function of amplitude and frequency, so I think 10-500 Hz (amplitude-frequency). Not sure about the math thing

Which HDD have you got ?

All drives are prone to failure, but chances of failure in a SSD are slim. So, invest in a SSD, if worried about bumping around, mechanical failure and data loss....

 

I dropped a harddrive in a very small and light enclosure last week. About 60cm to the wooden floor, non operating.

I was happy to found out it still works perfect.

 

haha thanks for the help guys

i guess ill stop worrying now
the impact didnt seem to be too bad... wasnt too high and it was only one end of the laptop hit the table (i was lifting it up with the back hinge resting on the table as a pivot)

everything seems to work fine, i ran some games on it, gpu gets to around 60C max, system is relatively cool so I think the fans are fine and havent been shifted or knocked loose
hard drive stays around 44C, which seems kinda high but i think its normal for this system
copied a couple gigs of files from one partition to another with no problems other than the fact that it was a tad slow (i think thats due to vista though)
played a few cd/dvds with no problems

also my drive is the wd3200bevt (scorpio blue)