hard drive head crashing?

**the4ork** · 03-03-2005, 07:14 AM

i dunno about you guys, but i tend to drive my car hard... and im worried if i go with an all out firewire 160+gig hard drive and i go drive my car hard for a month or so and the heads are crashing together and my drive will be fcuked up?

anyway around this?

**Gobby** · 03-03-2005, 07:16 AM

Yeah drive more carefully :-)

Try mounting the drive on its side, helps a bit with vibrations etc

**stevieg** · 03-03-2005, 09:28 AM

Originally Posted by the4ork

i dunno about you guys, but i tend to drive my car hard... and im worried if i go with an all out firewire 160+gig hard drive and i go drive my car hard for a month or so and the heads are crashing together and my drive will be fcuked up?

anyway around this?

1) mount with the platters facing the same way as the wheel. Heavy accelleration/braking g's therefore will not be pushing the heads towards the platters.
2) avoid potholes, however I have hit a brick in the road at 60 mph and blew out the back tyre and my HDD was fine.
3) don't jolt the car too much going into corners, if you're going sideways the point at which you regain traction would I think be the point at which the g's would come home to the HDD, as if mounted as above it's vunerable mainly sideways.

that way your main risks are damaging the other HDD mechanisms.

having said all that when I was testing out an earlier version of my car pc I took a corner sharply to say the least and the unsecured case flew across the back of the boot. all still works fine

My daily drive is 20 miles of country lanes so it's not the best environment for sensitive electronics!

If you're not prepared to buy a new drive, be careful. Otherwise have fun and keep backups.

**coach** · 03-03-2005, 10:29 AM

Use compact flash adapter to IDE for windows and main components and use a removable USB or Firewire drive for your files that you can just unplug in the event of major driving.

Brent

**stevieg** · 03-03-2005, 10:42 AM

Originally Posted by coach

Use compact flash adapter to IDE for windows and main components and use a removable USB or Firewire drive for your files that you can just unplug in the event of major driving.

Brent

hehe, it's the tunes that usually inspire the driving

**TruckinMP3** · 03-03-2005, 06:00 PM

Originally Posted by the4ork

i dunno about you guys, but i tend to drive my car hard... and im worried if i go with an all out firewire 160+gig hard drive and i go drive my car hard for a month or so and the heads are crashing together and my drive will be fcuked up?

anyway around this?

Get a grip... Lots of drives in cars.... very few crashes (of the HD) Do some reading and learn something.

This forum has been up for awhile now... this topic has been beat to death.

**rb_selectblend** · 03-06-2005, 12:29 AM

I have to agree with these guys!!! Regular ATA hard drives can take quite a beating & keep on ticking - unless you got a bad HD from the start.
The ones to be more gentle with are laptop HD's, since they are usually more sensitive to vibration. I do nothing but test things like this for a living, and I find that very few HD's are damaged from shock & vibe as they are from heat.. but you can never be good enough to your stuff, unless your rich & just don't care!! you also gotta think the heads are mounted on alloy arms which are strong & engineered to resist vertical movement.