Thread: Shock protection for your 3.5" HDD for $17

Originally Posted by tom2112

Check it out:
http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/s...sp?T1=161+0414

It fits in a 5.25" drive slot, and holds a 3.5" drive suspended by rubber blocks. I bought one, and it is heavy, but the chromed steel looks snazzy!

keep us posted and let us know how it works!

thats pretty neat, i guess that woudl help. But is a harddrive dying because of shock a big problem with a car pc?

Originally Posted by NovaKane

thats pretty neat, i guess that woudl help. But is a harddrive dying because of shock a big problem with a car pc?

It can be but it isn't as big as a problem as some people make it out to be. Normally, as long as you don't go around intentionally finding potholes to drive through you should be fine.

Ditto on what Kami said. A couple people have had nasty drive failures - most don't have any problem - and that's without doing anything special.

The cheapest and best protection for your hard drive is to mount it standing on it's side. This allows any vertical shock (like hitting a pothole) to "shake" the drive heads up and down, but keeps those same heads from impacting the platters, causing scratches and data loss. If you mount the drive normally, the heads would "shake" and hit the platters - which is bad.

Also you should mount the drive to something solid. By that I mean that whatever it is mounted to should not be able to "wiggle" back and forth - that's called occilation and is really bad. That doesn't mean that you need to weld it to the frame of the car, just don't mount it to a thin plastic panel.

That seems to contradict the idea of the device I suggested in the first post. But keep in mind that the rubber will "wiggle" but it won't occilate or allow any harmonic vibrations to occur. It will absorb that stuff.

The firmer the mount, the more shock the drive will get. The more flexible the mount, the more occilation the drive will get. So you have to balance those factors out.

Obviously kami never drove around New England in the spring.

A 24 x 6 ft section of 84 opened up the other day. Now that's a pothole.

Originally Posted by saito

Obviously kami never drove around New England in the spring.

A 24 x 6 ft section of 84 opened up the other day. Now that's a pothole.

I lived North of Boston (near Lawerence) for 3years and in Utah for a long time too

24x6ft??? Freaking ridiculus, now I remember why I hate driving up there.

Originally Posted by saito

Obviously kami never drove around New England in the spring.

A 24 x 6 ft section of 84 opened up the other day. Now that's a pothole.

I second that... when you see cars getting stuck in pot holes you know your in NE. Two tires and two rims later (that was this winter) still no problems with HD.....

I've driven on washboard-like dirt roads without any problems so far. Man, I don't like diving on those roads without a computer, I figured my computer would crash instantly... nope, takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'

Definitely mount it vertically. Hard drives are like nitroglycerin. You could bump it and nothing happens. The next you bump the drive it explodes in your face... or maybe not. They are the most precise piece of machinery most people own today.