How to Mount Hard drive for Shock?

**bry21317** · 11-22-2004, 05:41 PM

I am designing how I am going to build my Car PC. I plan on Using a Shuttle SB62 motherboard, but building my own case. I am wanting to know what I will need to do to Mount a Seagate 120GB HD, so that it will not crash when I hit a bump. I do computer tech support for a software company, and have seen many dead drives.

I have searched on the Internet, but have not seen any special cases that allow for shock mounting the drive. I have a 4wd Yukon, and do drive pretty rough at times, so I want to make sure that my drive is as protected as it can be.

Any help would be greatly apreciated. If I have missed it in the search I am sorry for asking again. I did search, but have not found any posts.

Thanks,
Bryan

**hijinks21** · 11-22-2004, 05:52 PM

I'm a sys admin and I can tell you most drives die in servers due to use and heat. My maxtor 60gig drive in my car lasted 3 years in a car (off roading every now and then) till i took it out.

It was just mounted normally to the case.. nothing special. If you're really worried use a laptop drive. Or somepeople have put rubber washers around it. The problem with a spring like shock system is you can create more shock.. Or if you wrap it something you'll overheat it.

**BiohazrD** · 11-22-2004, 06:52 PM

Or you can mount it so that the platters will be -| the ground. It will prevent scraping.

**Maukio** · 11-22-2004, 07:01 PM

is your friend.

As far as mounting an HDD, there are a lot of theories as to what helps it last, but many people have had joe shmoe regular full-sized HDDs running in their carputers (parallel to the ground) and have been fine. If you are worried, like the other guys said, get a laptop HDD and/or mount it perpendicular to the ground, but as long as you securely mount it to the case chassis (or to whatever you choose to mount it) it should be fine.

The reason people don't do springs or some type of damper deal is b/c the HDD starts to oscillate and that's not good.

**bry21317** · 11-23-2004, 11:34 AM

Thanks for the Information guys. I have had more Laptop drives die on me in the past, that is why I want to use the Seagate with a 5 yr warranty.

**hijinks21** · 11-23-2004, 11:37 AM

probably a good idea.. my maxtor drive is still kicking strong in my htpc now. Most laptop drives i've seen that die are due to heat or someone dropped their laptop off a table or such to create a ton of shock.

**ThEScReW** · 11-23-2004, 03:42 PM

If you look at my carputer, i think this is the best way : vertical and in line with your car ! In that way the platters has no gravitation effect, no effect on bubbels, and if your garddisk is in line with your car, your platters don't have the force of acceleration and breaking !