What's Worse for Hard Drives: Heat or Vibration?

gottabeme asks: "I turned on my computer the other day and all of a sudden the BIOS said the S.M.A.R.T. status was "Bad: backup and replace." The drive has continued working in PIO mode (instead of DMA) long enough for me to get a new drive and copy everything over. When I finished copying and put the new drive in the cage where the old one was, I realized that the fan at the front of the cage which was keeping the drive cool to the touch was causing a fair amount of vibration to be transferred to the hard drive. The other 7200rpm drive without a fan was pretty warm, but had no vibration at all. The bad drive is only a few years old, and I've never had a drive fail on me in around 10 years of computer use, until now. And until I got this case and drive I'd never had a fan blowing on a drive before. Who knows what caused the problem, but all this has made me wonder: Which is worse for a hard drive? Heat that's fairly warm to the touch, or constant vibration from a case fan right next to it? Any readers care to offer their experiences and knowledge?"

Comments

Hammers.

[stienman]

Definitely hammers.

Aside from hammers, though, heat and vibration, taken together, cause serious problems.

The systems I work on, however, have to deal more more heat than vibration. Badly made hard drive motors, such as those in late model Fujitsu hard drives, create ton of heat - you would burn yourself on them if they didn't have a fan.

If your drives are below 60 degrees celsius (hot, but you won't get burned) then you really don't need to worry about heat.

Vibration is not nearly an issue with today's computers as it was when items were socketted to printed circuit boards and connectors were manufactured to loose tolerances. Now everything is soldered, and if it isn't soldered it uses a tight connector that requires forces measured in kilograms to remove.

Vibration is rarely an issue. Even in a hard drive where magnetic and air forces keep the head microns away from the platter, vibrations are still measured in G's - not fractions of G's. Prolonged constant vibrations can cause increased wear and tear, but not by a lot. In order to make an operating hard drive crash it's heads with the vibration of a fan, you'll have to attach it to the equipment tie down point of an industrial cement kiln fan, and attach a 50lb weight to one of the blades at the edge. Even then, I'd bet on the heads not crashing before the fan bearings break. You're piddly little fan is no match for my flying head air bearing technology!

So, in short, take care of the heat first, but only if it's very hot. Don't worry about warm. If your fan is vibrating then it needs to be cleaned. If you've cleaned it and it is still vibrating, get a new fan - they aren't expensive.

If you're playing the cost tradeoff game then you're playing it wrong. When the question is "What's cheaper: a new vibration free fan, or replacing my hard drive every other year..." the answer is always the new vibration free fan.

Lastly, expect new hard drives to last exactly the length of their warranty, regardless of how you treat them. The profit margin for hard drives today is so thin that it's not worth making one that will last longer than the warranty.

-Adam