Hard drives are much more fragile when they are in operation. If you drop a running laptop a foot or two you do risk damaging the hard drive. But when they are off they can take being jarred around as long as it's not a really sharp impact (like being dropped 4 feet onto cement.)
I had a user before who tripped over their ethernet cable and pulled a running laptop off of the desk. It put a huge streak of bad sectors on the HD. If the laptop was off it would have been fine because hard drives park their heads off of the data area, so if they experience vibration, the heads won't crash into the disk and damage the magnetic coating (creating bad sectors.) THis would be the most common form of damage. Hard drives are engineered very solidy, so unless you really pound it you don't have to worry about a part breaking loose inside or anything like that.
I mentioned laptops because they are a prime example of hard drives that travel.
I would say if you wrap it up it would be fine on a hiking trip, as long as you don't forget it's in there and throw your bag down a cliff or something (^_^😉 Also keep it dry!
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