I dropped my hard drive onto floor - how bad is it ?

[wearetheborg]

I was opening up the western digital passport HDD:
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=199

It came in a pastic enclosure, like that for mp3s. I was tearing up the enclosure, when a plastic piece snapped and the rest slipped and slammed onto the hardwood floor (as if I had thrown the thing onto the floor). The HDD was still inside.
I plugged in the HDD, and it seems to run ok.

My question is, how much damage did I do the HDD ? Its running, so was I lucky and it escaped unharmed or is it the case that its lifetime is now down by 90% ?

 

[DyslexicHobo]

Just as a test of durability of drives, a couple of my friends an I slammed our hard drives into a cement wall. By "slammed", I mean we took them and threw them pretty much as hard as we could into a cement wall.

They still worked! Gotta love old IBM drives.

I wouldn't worry about too much damage being done.


Edit: Didn't notice you were talking about an external drive. I don't really know the difference between the two, so I don't know if my story can be applied to this scenario at all.

 

[wearetheborg]

Originally posted by: DyslexicHobo
Just as a test of durability of drives, a couple of my friends an I slammed our hard drives into a cement wall. By "slammed", I mean we took them and threw them pretty much as hard as we could into a cement wall.

They still worked! Gotta love old IBM drives.

I wouldn't worry about too much damage being done.


Edit: Didn't notice you were talking about an external drive. I don't really know the difference between the two, so I don't know if my story can be applied to this scenario at all.

I am usually uncomfortable moving my laptop around while its running, so when the external HDD slammed into the floor, I nearly had a heart attack.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: DyslexicHobo
Just as a test of durability of drives, a couple of my friends an I slammed our hard drives into a cement wall. By "slammed", I mean we took them and threw them pretty much as hard as we could into a cement wall.

They still worked! Gotta love old IBM drives.

I wouldn't worry about too much damage being done.

I certainly would. Perhaps the old IBMs were just really tough (as a lot of IBM stuff was and is), but you can really screw up a drive by force like that.

OP: Run a scandisk a few times and if nothing has errored you're probably fine.

 

[wetcat007]

HDD's when not running can be relatively durable, you're probably fine. You can run a western digital drive test on it to make sure it's ok, otherwise get IBM Drive Fitness Test and try that.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: wetcat007
HDD's when not running can be relatively durable, you're probably fine. You can run a western digital drive test on it to make sure it's ok, otherwise get IBM Drive Fitness Test and try that.

In general, drives can take a *lot* of abuse while not running (accelerations of over 100g are often tolerable, which is something like a drop from 3 or 4 feet onto a hard surface). If it was still in the shipping case, it's probably fine. As suggested, you can run a surface scan on the drive and ensure there are no bad sectors. It's possible it will have a slightly higher risk of premature failure, but there's really no way to know.

It came in a pastic enclosure, like that for mp3s

I'm just curious how you put mp3 files in a plastic enclosure.

 

[wearetheborg]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

I'm just curious how you put mp3 files in a plastic enclosure.

Why, you just put them into an mp3 player, and put that player into the plastic enclosure

I ran scandisk (I think). I did "check disk" by right clicking on drive and going to tools.
I selected "automatically fix errors" and "checkfor bad sectors"

The scan ran for a hour or so and said "finished scanning disk" or some such thing. It did not give any error message.

Does this mean it could not find any errors ? Or it found errors and automatically fixed them ?

 

[imported_Imp]

You probably got off lucky, but if there were a problem, I doubt it'd cause bad sectors. I'd be more worried about what got knocked ''looser' or got slightly mis-aligned. Just in case, regularly back it up and turn SMART on in the BIOS (so you know before bootup), and get a program that can report SMART readings in windows. On the bright side, if it did die, you could RMA it and say 'well, it worked fine for a while after it fell'; leave out the last 3 words.

 

[wearetheborg]

Any recommendation for a SMART monitoring tool ?

 

[Bozo Galora]

Its been my experience that if a HDD is dropped and doesnt work - it never will, if a HDD is dropped and it works, it always will, assuming an immediate chkdsk shows no errors

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fr...monitoring+software&btnG=Google+Search

 

[Laputa]

It really depends on where the read head wing tips were at then you drive was dropped and at which angle the drive got dropped and how much force was applied to the read head wing tips. If it was dropped parallel towards the angle where it's supposed to park. No damage. You just happened to be lucky in this case.

 

[montypythizzle]

if it dropped go to a doctor you could have damaged something in the process

 

[ForumMaster]

as long as it wasn't running and the heads were parked, it should be ok. i suggest though that you use a program to monitor S.M.A.R.T. data from your hdd. i use SpeedFan. also reports temps.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: wetcat007
HDD's when not running can be relatively durable, you're probably fine. You can run a western digital drive test on it to make sure it's ok, otherwise get IBM Drive Fitness Test and try that.

In general, drives can take a *lot* of abuse while not running (accelerations of over 100g are often tolerable, which is something like a drop from 3 or 4 feet onto a hard surface). If it was still in the shipping case, it's probably fine. As suggested, you can run a surface scan on the drive and ensure there are no bad sectors. It's possible it will have a slightly higher risk of premature failure, but there's really no way to know.

The old Conner drives (before Seagate bought them) were certified for 100g's non-operating shock.

 

[Butterbean]

Those smaller 2.5 drives were designed for notebooks so they take some knock-about pretty well. I have the 80gb version and its one of best computerish things I ever bought.

 

[nutxo]

A long time ago I was building a new computer. The hdd slipped out of my hand and my catlike reflexes kicked in. Instead of reaching out and grabbing it I did sort of a roundhouse kick sending it flying across the room and nearly embeddiing it into a wall before it went and fell 4 foot onto the floor.

I put it into the machine .It didnt work. It just made a squealing noise. Must have been manufacturer defect.......

 

[DyslexicHobo]

Originally posted by: nutxo
A long time ago I was building a new computer. The hdd slipped out of my hand and my catlike reflexes kicked in. Instead of reaching out and grabbing it I did sort of a roundhouse kick sending it flying across the room and nearly embeddiing it into a wall before it went and fell 4 foot onto the floor.

I put it into the machine .It didnt work. It just made a squealing noise. <b>Must have been manufacturer defect.......</b>

lol!

Did you have any trouble getting it RMA'd?

 

[nutxo]

Originally posted by: DyslexicHobo

Originally posted by: nutxo
A long time ago I was building a new computer. The hdd slipped out of my hand and my catlike reflexes kicked in. Instead of reaching out and grabbing it I did sort of a roundhouse kick sending it flying across the room and nearly embeddiing it into a wall before it went and fell 4 foot onto the floor.

I put it into the machine .It didnt work. It just made a squealing noise. <b>Must have been manufacturer defect.......</b>

lol!

Did you have any trouble getting it RMA'd?

Im ashamed to say I took it right back to the store and raised hell about a brand new dead drive.........

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: nutxo

Originally posted by: DyslexicHobo

Originally posted by: nutxo
A long time ago I was building a new computer. The hdd slipped out of my hand and my catlike reflexes kicked in. Instead of reaching out and grabbing it I did sort of a roundhouse kick sending it flying across the room and nearly embeddiing it into a wall before it went and fell 4 foot onto the floor.

I put it into the machine .It didnt work. It just made a squealing noise. <b>Must have been manufacturer defect.......</b>

lol!

Did you have any trouble getting it RMA'd?

Im ashamed to say I took it right back to the store and raised hell about a brand new dead drive.........

:laugh:

Hope the karma hasn't caught up yet. Did they see the dents and dry wall dust?

 

[kitkat22]

the Seagate barracuda's are touted to survive 68G's while operating and 350G's during nonoperation.

 

[BladeVenom]

If hard drives can survive UPS, a little fall probably isn't going to hurt them.

 

[nutxo]

Originally posted by: Imp

Originally posted by: nutxo

Originally posted by: DyslexicHobo

Originally posted by: nutxo
A long time ago I was building a new computer. The hdd slipped out of my hand and my catlike reflexes kicked in. Instead of reaching out and grabbing it I did sort of a roundhouse kick sending it flying across the room and nearly embeddiing it into a wall before it went and fell 4 foot onto the floor.

I put it into the machine .It didnt work. It just made a squealing noise. <b>Must have been manufacturer defect.......</b>

lol!

Did you have any trouble getting it RMA'd?

Im ashamed to say I took it right back to the store and raised hell about a brand new dead drive.........

:laugh:

Hope the karma hasn't caught up yet. Did they see the dents and dry wall dust?

I'd cleaned off the white paint. Actually I think I might have been their karma. A while back I was buying another HDD from the same place. They sell oem in plastic bags. When the guy went to grab me one it slipped out his hand and fell on the floor. Then he says " You probably dont want that one" handed me the next one down in the stack and threw the one he dropped back on top of the stack.

 

[wearetheborg]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
If hard drives can survive UPS, a little fall probably isn't going to hurt them.

It wasnt just a fall, it slipped while I was trying to tear up the plastic package, one part slipped, and it was as if I slammed it into the floor.

 

[dealseaker]

Originally posted by: wearetheborg

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
If hard drives can survive UPS, a little fall probably isn't going to hurt them.

It wasnt just a fall, it slipped while I was trying to tear up the plastic package, one part slipped, and it was as if I slammed it into the floor.

if your that worried, take it back and get another one, just tell them it is not working and you would like to try another one in your system before saying the hd is bad or your system is bad, let them know you have had trouble with campatibility before if you want. just a thought, I probably would not worry about it.

 

[wearetheborg]

I bought it online, and site says that it has the discretion to decide whether a return is defective.