Hard disk drive in motion

alberello: I take this in this way: Problems to which hard disk is exposed during transportation: I found this link useful in this regard. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244432-32-hard-drive-safty-transporting-system Transportation should be done with proper care -- bubble pack being used. In fact computer hard ware manufacturers would have arrived at a suitable form of packing taking into account the vagaries of weather change in transportation. I carry laptop as a personal luggage instead of it being put inside check-in luggage because there it is exposed to rough handling.

Traditional hard drives are susceptible to shock because they work by having circular platters revolving at a serious high speed and the data is transferred via a small read/write head that is extremely close to the platters. If the head ever touches the platters then the drive will not work again. However, most modern hard drives are quite sturdy and you would need to be rather clumsy to cause harm to them, unless you are very unlucky. The new SSD drives eliminate the danger because they do not have any moving parts, but sadly they are still very expensive items.

I am into computer repair and while not all parts are impervious to damage from regular usage, these hard drives are designed with movement in mind. Your hard drive is very unlikely to be damaged from being moved while they are writing information or be damaged from being jarred or dropped while the drive is working. What hurts a hard drive more that anything is if it is shut off unexpectedly repeatedly while trying to write information to the drive itself. For instance surge protectors are designed to keep voltage spikes out therefore doing immediate damage but in the early days manufacturers had not thought about what happens to the hard drive if it is working hard to write information and you get a power fluctuation where it shuts off the computer and then allows it to reboot from the restored power but then shut right down again by another outage. This most often happens in ice storms where the power lines are snapping and the power is struggling to stay alive in a certain area. You can go into your computers settings and tell it how you want it to respond to shut downs and the power button. I always set mine on staying off if the power is interrupted until I manually hit the button to reboot it. I only allow rebooting when installing software and cleaning out my system.

Hi, Going mobile has its own share of woes, a damaged hard disk drive among them when dropped. Most laptops are designed with this eventuality in mind but it is not a guarantee that it shall survive the inept handling of a lesser user. I am spared of this "mobile jinx" if I may say, being a desktop user, having built my own system from scratch as a prerequisite to my hardware training. Until now, I have not gotten away from the chains of the desk, having a real good experience with the deskbound ones in terms of their low cost, superior performance and reliable durability. Some HDD nowadays are solid state design too. More in line with the theme of the mobile world but the thing also goes well with the desktop PC so it is all the same for me. At least I can get away from it all when I go on vacation, having left my work behind at the desk and not with me, always begging for attention on the laptop.

Hard disk drives have moving parts, that's why any strong impact to your laptop can cause damage to it. However, modern storage medias called solid-state drives eliminate this problem, because it does not have any moving parts, it's highly durable and most of all it's definitely faster than hard disks, but that certainly comes with a price, solid-state drives are very expensive compared to traditional hard disk drives. I guess, the best thing we could do is to take care of our laptops and avoid dropping it.

HDD drives in a PC can be damaged if they fall down. Portable USB HDDs and laptops have anti-shock heads. USB HDDs drives don't work when you have them in your bag. No problem there. They could be damaged if they fall down while working. Laptops are made to work anywhere, so it is easier to be damaged by heat than shocks.