🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <755000585wnr@ttelmah.demon.co.uk>, Roger Hamlett
<roger@ttelmah.demon.co.uk> writes:

>This is not true. The human body, can take _massive_ momentary shocks,
>it is continuous 'G' loadings, at this high level, that can't be taken. It is
>suprising how _small_ a knock can be, and yet give 'G' loadings well
>above this sort of figure. Drop a disk, even 1", onto a solid surface, such as
>a stone floor, without the small rubber shock absorbers hidden in the
>mounts, and 'G' forces can be >>2-300G. Drop the same disk 10' onto
>a carpeted wooden floor, and instantaneous G forces, will be very much
>lower.

Agreed, 'small' impacts can lead to quite high forces and the effects on
disk drives can be unpredictable as in your examples but in general disk
drives are now much more robust than they were in the early days when
they got their reputation for delicacy. Early disk drives with 12"
removable packs utilized soft magnetic coatings and heavy heads and
could be induced to crash with very little provocation. Modern 3.5" and
2.5" drives have much harder coatings and minute heads resulting in much
more robust devices, just consider the everyday bumps and knocks the
average notebook or laptop suffers in it's working life.

I'm not suggesting we should deliberatly bash our drives about but the
magnitude of the typical tap to free stiction should not be a problem.

-- 
Mike Clarke