Hard Drives...two questions...

[sgw75]

I've seen friends hooking up their monster stereo systems fairly close to their ATX cases, blasting the bass while their playing games or listening to MP3's, and it made we question just how much shock a hard drive can really take. I've got 4 fairly new Western Digitals at home in two seperate PC's...both of which are in very close proximity to a nice stereo. I don't blast it like some of my bros, but after spending a ton of money on 2 18GB's & 2 20GB's, it kinda had me thinking. Okay, question 1: Can hard drives really handle the stress, like major sound vibration or an occasional bang on the computer table as a result from being nuked in Starcraft? Question 2: What are some warning signs that a HD is going bad...besides errors during scan disk?

[Romulus2]

Question 1) Yes, your suspicions are right. Modern hard drives are pretty tough but obviously the less they are disturbed, the longer they are going to last. The heads are less than the width of a human hair from the surface of the platters. Strong vibrations are NOT a good idea (keep speakers well away from the PC if you're going to play them loud) and certainly do try to resist the temptation to thump the desk when you're getting nuked! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

I'm lucky; I can thump the desk I keep my keyboard and mouse on to my heart's content. The PC is on an entirely different desk so it doesn't suffer any shocks or vibrations.

Question 2) The typical signs are as you suggested: scandisk errors and bad sectors. Running SMART will usually alert you to potential hard drive failure in advance.

[Cold Boot]

I don't believe that the conditions you have described will have any adverse effect on your drives.

Back in 1993 I "remobilized" a 200 meg. Seagate drive with a healthy blow with a rubber mallet. It is still working to this day.

Don't try this at home, folks.

[Romulus2]

Cold Boot~ You were one of the lucky ones. The ol' mallet method is a "last resort" technique that only works in a small percentage of cases.

You would be amazed at the abuse many people expect their hard drives to be able to withstand. Many of the faulty hard drives we get returned to our firm are mailed to us in jiffy bags or even just plain brown envelopes! "My hard drive has bad sectors" complains our customer. "Yes", we reply, "it certainly will NOW!"

[Cold Boot]

Of course you're correct Romulus2.

The safest solution for swg75 is to endeavour to isolate his drives from any conditions that could be construed to be adverse, such as vibration etc.

I guess there is no point in "pushing the envelope" when it concerns data storage and expensive hard drives. As you say. prehaps I have been lucky.

[Stan]

Hmmm, I have one of my machine close to a 100W sub...
Been there for almost a year... no problem so far

Stan

[Romulus2]

Stan~ So do I (though I never play very loud music) and no problems so far. I also have no House Contents insurance at the moment and no burglaries or fires so far. But neither of those situations are really a very good idea! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[Stan]

Well, I usually play loud music... as I love dance music (being Belgian)...
No problem with neighbours so far...
As for burglars, I have House Contents insurance and a special alarm monitored 24/7/365...

Stan

[Underclocked]

I would think there would also be a concern about the strong magnetic fields adjacent to large speakers, especially subs. Just seems a bad idea to me to have a pc sitting next to one.

[sgw75]

Wow, I didn't think I would get so many responses in such a short amount of time. Thank You. Yes, both of my machines are very close to some serious loud speakers. I don't play my music very loud, the the suggestion of a magnetic field has got me planning a different room arrangement. Just out of curiosity, I felt the side of one of my towers, and I felt a small vibration. I though it was perhaps the power supply fan or something, but much closer inspection revealed that it was comming from one of my drives! I performed a scan disk & defrag on all of my drives yesterday, and there weren't any problems. Can this possibly be normal, or is this vibration something to loose sleep over?

[Brangwen]

Women At Given what goes on inside of a hard drive, I would suggest that some vibration is normal. It might be wise to make certain that your hard drives are secure in their brackets or mounts. Check out some sites that explain the inner workings of hard drives. I have read a couple but I do not have the addresses (URLs) offhand. Perhaps someone else responding to your post will be able to provide you with a good site. I have mostly owned Western Digital hard drives. I think they have a fairly good bulletin board: www.WDC.com. (http://www.WDC.com.) Check it out, I think you'll find it informative. Good luck!