How hard is it to break a laptop hard drive by moving it around? If you dropped it, would it still work?

Question

I havn't dropped it yet, but was wondering what would happen if I did, because I'm really clumsy

Answer 1

The hard drive is very durable. If it is running and doing a disk access at the time of the drop, and it is not of the shock technology offered in IBM drives, it can cause a head crash that will either damage the head or the disk. I would be more worried about damaging the motherboard or the screen electronics.

Answer 2

Due to their size laptop drives are far more delicate than standard 3.5 inch desktop drives....in my experience.
That said there are many factors to this question. Drives these days are more forgiving to shock during shipment and other situations when the are not in use; However if the drive is powered up and subject to shock thy are still very fragile. You might want to look into smart monitoring software like activesmart. Although not 100% effective at determining drive health it can give you a warning by querying many drive statistics.

You could even go in to detail on the question about the height it was dropped from, the surface it landed on, how it hit etc

Answer 3

Disagreeing with the 3.5", it becomes a question of how short the arms are. The shorter, the sturdier, and the relative strength goes up exponentially. I've dropped several drives without incedent, but haven't seen one 'break' since 5". I agree that given a seeking run at the right angle could cause a head crash, but most falls (from hands or table) hit on the side or with the platter and head direction, not flat.

Answer 4

the hard drive itself could be dropped and submerged and still work as long as its not dropped too far

Answer 5

Possibly, but I would NOT recommend it.