can hitting your desk damage a hdd when it's on?

[An00bis]

every time I get up from my chair i lightly bump the desk and in turn send a shock to my pc case is this bad? can my hdd get damaged?

I saw it now has a pending sector, maybe its a software error and will get fixed but still, can this happen, is this a risk? or bumping your desk is comparable to the vibrations the hdd usually experiences during work?

what does it take for a hdd to be damaged? a fall from 1 meter while it's working (PC case falling from the desk for ex.)? a slap on the pc case? wut?

 

[KingFatty]

There was a study where guys looked at HD performance metrics over time. It was instantaneous feedback, and so they went over to the rack of hard drives and *YELLED* loudly at the drives. The vibration from yelling caused the performance to dip.

So yes, I think bumping and shocking hard drives can make them work harder, but I don't know if it will lead to breaking the drive, because they are quite robust.

 

[Cerb]

There was a study where guys looked at HD performance metrics over time. It was instantaneous feedback, and so they went over to the rack of hard drives and *YELLED* loudly at the drives. The vibration from yelling caused the performance to dip.

Dunno about a study, but...

 

[fzabkar]

Just saw this ...

http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?t=26795&p=183594#p183594

Ouch!

 

[denis280]

Depend how big is the hit.it is just like if you hit your dvd player it will skip.but hdd are stronger.

 

[Zorander]

It will probably shorten the life to an extent, judging by the degree of degradation my portable HD has compared to my desktop HDD (both purchased at about the same time). How much is harder to say considering the many factors involved from how dampening the table and PC case are, how much isolation the HD has inside the case, how strongly you bump the desk, how sturdy the HD itself is, etc.

 

[corkyg]

It's really a matter of degree - how hard the shock, and what the HDD was doing when it hit. That's why I have for over 20 years, put my tower PCs on the floor under the desk.

 

[saratoga172]

Don't think you'll have any real problems. Keep your stuff backed up just in case like always but I doubt it'll really decrease your lifespan before it's replaced.

 

[Deders]

Yes hitting a computer can cause bad sectors on a drive if you hit it hard enough, which in turn can cause systems not to boot if the data damaged is essential.

Someone I know dropped their laptop and ended up with thousands of bad sectors. Took me 2.5 days to do a full disk scan.

 

[An00bis]

wow for some reason (probably really bad luck) I discovered that I had 1 uncorrectable offline sector today, last check was 2 days ago and back then the HDD was clean but now it has this problem, I also tried to do a full disk check using WD's dlgdiag preboot program thingy and it told me "missing test track error 209" (googled it and apparently its a very rare error, so rare not even WD knows about it and I only found like 2 people on the entire internet who have it as well, and didn't let me scan it, in windows it worked but with that program it didn't work

I've had a problem like this a few months ago, the drive found a bad sector but apparently it got fixed by itself suddenly, it didnt even show up as being relocated, just disappeared, also back then chkdsk told me it found no errors or bad sectors (I made it scan for them btw and the drive was dismounted by the OS) and now it returned the same results

could it be an error like that yet again? just a software error probably coming from the OS itself?

I also found a weird thing
the current and worst values are 200, I looked at other blank values and seen that they have 200 as well, the values that have numbers bigger than 0 have different "current" and "worst" values, also the threshold values are all 0, but the "Data" values for offline uncorrectable and write errors are 1 each, what could this mean?

there's also the fact that the eror became offline uncorrectable immediately almost, shouldn't it have been reallocated? I think the drive has enough spare sectors considering this is the first error of this kind

also is the drive old? it's been up for 9000 hours in the past... 1 year i think, I left it open during some nights and days

It's really a matter of degree - how hard the shock, and what the HDD was doing when it hit. That's why I have for over 20 years, put my tower PCs on the floor under the desk.

sounds like a great idea I'm planning to do that in a few weeks, buy a custom made desk that has a compartment like that that's opened so it has good airflow for the case

 

[Soulkeeper]

My seagate drives make a beep sound if I hit the desk too hard.
I think they have some kinda gforce sensor

 

[An00bis]

oddly, the data values the numbers that go from 0 to 200 (i presume 200 means 0 or "100% normal"?), are the same for both of my drives, one is brand new and 100% healthy and the other is the one with this problem

could it be that the SMART programs are displaying false alarms since dlgdiag tells me everything is fine? dlgdiag was made by WD
Ive had a similar problem with my new drive as well, it reported some dangerous values but then it fixed itself, also a while ago when I refreshed the smart values in HD Tune (a software that can read SMART data) it returned crazy high random numbers for each value like 8523792 hours uptime, 120398 temperature celsius, 1231245 spin time and others

i wonder why dlgdiag wont scan it though and gives me the "missing test tracks" error which i never found why it appears, on the internet

 

[An00bis]

hmm I made a pic so you understand what I'm trying to say

also why did dlgdiag fail doing a test and tell me "test tracks missing"? a few weeks ago it worked fine... what the hell is wrong with this drive? a few months ago it had some uncorrectable sectors, now they're PERMANENTLY gone, not even "uncorrectable" or "reallocated"

then its temperature/spin rate/ and other values had random, large numbers as if it was some kind of bug

now smart data from speedfan and hdtune tell me first it had 1 pending sector, now it has 1 write error and an uncorrectable sector

but western digital's dlgdiag (ran in windows, the DOS one gives an error) tells me the drive is 100% fine, chkdisk tells me it's fine too, gives me results almost the same as my 1 month old WD10EZEX

wow... im getting mind fucked over here, what should I do, is it all some kind of bug showing how unreliable is SMART?

 

[Mushkins]

Those hard drive test apps can be flaky unless the drive is seriously and critically failing, I wouldn't put too much stock in them.

To answer the OP, any strong source of vibration can damage a HDD, including hitting your desk. *Especially* if it's reading/writing when it happens. Think of it like an old school record player, how did records get scratched? When the read head gets bumped and skips, damaging the record.

 

[An00bis]

now this stupid WD dlgdiag tool unmounted my drive (like chkdsk does) and forgot to unmount it back

I think I just lost 1 tb of data...

oh god this is just depressing

 

[Imp]

Maybe they don't build them like they used to... but I used to punch my computer and bash the table when I was losing Age of Empires...

 

[fzabkar]

An00bis, the "200" values are normalised values, not raw value. A value of 200 represents a perfect score.

Instead show us the raw values reported by HD Tune or CrystalDiskInfo.

 

[2is]

There was a particular model Acer netbook (don't recall which one though) that were plagued by HDD failures. IIRC, the cause of the premature failures were due to the proximity of the HDD to the speakers.

 

[An00bis]

An00bis, the "200" values are normalised values, not raw value. A value of 200 represents a perfect score.

Instead show us the raw values reported by HD Tune or CrystalDiskInfo.

I know but this happened in the past as well making me think something's wrong with those smart values. the raw values are 1 for write errors and 1 for offline uncorrectable sectors, 0 for everything else including "reallocated sectors"

also this hdtune test shows me nothing's wrong, pic related

also why do I get a "missing test tracks 229" error while running WD's hdd testing utility in DOS before boot? in windows it runs fine for this harddisk
should I RMA it? I googled everything about this error and couldn't find anything about it, apparently not even WD knows why it appears

 

[utahraptor]

It probably matters how hard you are hitting the desk. If you have concerns about it I would suggest purchasing some rubber washer typing cushions that are inserted between the hard drive and the screws holding it in the case. I have used them in the past. They provide some degree of dampening for minor shocks.

 

[tweakboy]

If your case is not touching the desk, then your fine no worries.

I recommend the Thermaltake iCage .. you can put 3 hard drives in it. with 120mm blue quiete fan. its very cheap like 20 bucks or less.

Once you install the drives in icage,, I tighten screws to max when connecting drive to iCage. Then you put in the 120mm iCage into comp and tighten that screws both sides.. Your drives are now protected. However you cant BUMP your computer. A bit of contact with case is ok tho. gl

every time I get up from my chair i lightly bump the desk and in turn send a shock to my pc case is this bad? can my hdd get damaged?

I saw it now has a pending sector, maybe its a software error and will get fixed but still, can this happen, is this a risk? or bumping your desk is comparable to the vibrations the hdd usually experiences during work?

what does it take for a hdd to be damaged? a fall from 1 meter while it's working (PC case falling from the desk for ex.)? a slap on the pc case? wut?

 

[An00bis]

An00bis, the "200" values are normalised values, not raw value. A value of 200 represents a perfect score.

Instead show us the raw values reported by HD Tune or CrystalDiskInfo.

wow this is just weird

the raw values are all 0 now


what the...


this happened again, this is the 2nd time the SMART values tell me a bad sector happened and actually it didn't, and the values reset to 0

and now the WD diagnosis tool works again, no more "missing test tracks" error

what's happening with this hdd? it's the weirdest hdd I've ever had...

 

[bononos]

It probably matters how hard you are hitting the desk. If you have concerns about it I would suggest purchasing some rubber washer typing cushions that are inserted between the hard drive and the screws holding it in the case. I have used them in the past. They provide some degree of dampening for minor shocks.

Those grommet type things are only good for dampening vibrations from harddisks/dvd/bd drives transfering over to the case and making annoying sounds. Its not good enough for minor shocks disturbing harddrives.

 

[bononos]

......

what does it take for a hdd to be damaged? a fall from 1 meter while it's working (PC case falling from the desk for ex.)? a slap on the pc case? wut?

Its a bad idea to bump/slap/move/jostle the case or in your example, the table where the case is resting in while the harddisk is running especially when its reading/writing. They are sensitive to shocks.

 

[fzabkar]

the raw values are all 0 now

It could be that those particular attributes represent rolling averages rather than cumulative totals.