Protecting Hard Drives From Jackhammers

Faramir writes: "I need some help with a jackhammering problem. You see, construction is going on, oh, about 5-10 feet behind the wall of the lab I work in. Essentially right next to my head. And next to this wall I have a number of PCs and a file server with a bunch of nice SCSI drives. And I have no idea how long it is safe to leave them running." (Read more below.)

"I can look at the vibration tolerance specs for the hard drives (my main concern), but translating this into jack hammer vibrations is beyond my ken. Also beyond the manufacturer's tech support, as I suspected. Any clues? Suggestions? Thanks!"

Perhaps the same principles apply to protecting hard drives from loud music, but since heavy-duty laptops aren't much of a solution for holding a rack of SCSI drives, many of the options mentioned there might not apply.

Comments

Sand

[lizrd]

Sandbags are great for eliminating vabrations. Most of the other posters on this thread have mentioned using something massive (like steel or granite) or something soft (like rubber or foam) to isolate your equipment from the vibrations. Sandbags have both qualities and are cheap as dirt too [ok, bad pun, couldn't help it]. Only thing to be careful of is making sure that your floor will support several hundred pounds of sand.

Jackhammers

[annielaurie]

While you're dealing with the vibrations, be sure to watch out for the dust -- where you've got one, there's a good chance you'll be dealing with the other.

I wouldn't try to protect the systems in any way -- just keep an eye on their outside cases and be prepared to clean a little more often. I neglected this in an at-home machine several years back while some wallboard was being fixed, and what I found inside after the work was done was a bit alarming. If I'd just dusted the case often with a clean cloth, I could have kept a lot of that dust away from the components.

I hope the construction goes away soon. It's not much fun.
Annie