Quick Answer
Dropping a hard drive can definitely damage it and potentially ruin it completely. Hard drives contain delicate mechanical parts and sensitive electronic components that can fail if subjected to sharp impacts or jolts. However, the extent of damage depends on factors like how far it fell, what surface it landed on, and luck. Drives designed to be rugged are more drop-resistant.
What happens when you drop a hard drive?
When a hard drive is dropped, the magnetic read/write heads can crash into the spinning platters and cause severe scratching or shattering of the platters. The arm holding the heads can bend or break off completely. If a drive falls while powered on, the sudden movement can cause the heads to jerk across the platters and destroy large amounts of data. The delicate motor bearings can also be damaged or displaced, preventing the platters from spinning properly.
Factors that determine extent of damage
Height of the fall
The higher the drive falls from, the greater the impact when it hits the ground. Even a short fall of a few feet can generate enough force to damage internal components. Dropping from higher than about 3 feet significantly increases the chances of catastrophic failure.
Orientation during the fall
If the drive lands flat on its side, the shock can be evenly distributed across the casing. But falling at an angle concentrates the impact force on one section, multiplying the shock to internal parts underneath. This is worse for drives without shock-absorbing features.
Type of surface landed on
Hard surfaces like concrete floors transmit the full shock into the drive, while softer surfaces like carpet help cushion the landing. Landing on irregular or pointed objects can pierce the drive casing and cause direct damage to platters and heads.
Power state during the fall
Falling while powered off allows the heads to safely park in a landing zone where they won’t hit the platters. But if falling while active, the heads are hovering just above the platter surfaces and can crash into them.
Presence of shock dampening features
Some drives designed for extra ruggedness have thick bumpers, motion sensors, and head parking mechanisms to mitigate fall impacts. Consumer models generally lack these protections and are more vulnerable.
Immediate effects of dropping a hard drive
You’ll usually hear or feel an ominous “thud” when an unprotected hard drive hits the ground. The most immediate symptom is that the drive will stop working altogether. On older drives, you might hear clearly audible “clicking” noises as the heads repeatedly try and fail to access damaged platters. Newer drives quickly detect the mechanical issue and halt operations.
Obvious external signs like cracks, dents, or chassis coming apart indicate severe internal damage. But the drive can fail from an internal broken part without exterior clues. Your computer will signal the drive fault with error messages or not detect the drive at all.
Is the drive salvageable?
With professional data recovery tools, it’s sometimes possible to repair drives just enough to extract valuable data off them before they totally fail. But repairing them well enough to reliably continue using the drive is much less likely.
If the chassis, circuit boards, or interface connectors got damaged, the drive is probably beyond salvageable. But otherwise, specialized hard drive repair services offer a chance for drives with mechanical damage. This involves delicately opening up the casing in a dust-free clean room and transplanting the platters or heads onto an identically matched donor drive. Then they attempt recovering as much data as possible onto another external drive.
This is expensive service costing $300 or much more, still with no guarantee of success. It really only makes financial sense for recovering irreplaceable data. In most cases of significant damage, buying a new replacement drive is the cheapest option.
Best practices for avoiding drive damage
While today’s drives are engineered to withstand reasonable shocks, you should follow these precautions to minimize the risks of dropping or jolting any drive:
- Handle drives very gently, especially when transporting them.
- Don’t move or use drives while they’re actively reading or writing.
- Pad the space around drives inside your computer case to absorb shocks.
- Place drives on even surfaces and avoid tilting or wobbling.
- Don’t stack heavy objects on top of bare drives.
Portable external hard drives face higher risks of being dropped, so buy a quality case with plenty of padding and grip. Never disconnect or unplug a drive while it’s still running. Back up your data frequently to mitigate potential data loss from drive damage.
How are modern hard drives designed to withstand drops?
Engineers have incorporated several features to help minimize the effects of impacts and drops on modern hard disk drives:
Head parking ramps
The read/write heads can automatically retract onto plastic ramps away from the platters when powered off or if sudden acceleration is detected. This prevents them from crashing onto platter surfaces.
Sudden motion sensors
These Gyroscopic sensors detect freefall and quickly trigger emergency head parking before impact, saving drives even if they’re dropped while fully powered on.
Shock absorbers
Rubber or silicone bumpers fitted inside the chassis dampen energy from direct blows. Some drives also have active counterbalancing mechanisms to stabilize the head arm assembly and prevent data loss.
Sturdier casing designs
Metal or extra thick plastic enclosures better withstand physical deformation, protecting internal parts underneath. Rounded casings help deflect blows from certain angles.
Filler fluids
High-end enterprise drives are filled with inert gases or fluorinated liquids that dissipate heat and displace airborne contaminants. This stabilizes drive parts against shocks and vibrations.
Tighter tolerances
Components like ball bearings, platters, and actuators are engineered to much finer tolerances to shake off impacts without getting knocked out of position or breaking.
Are solid state drives (SSDs) more drop resistant?
Solid state drives that lack moving parts are far more resistant to damage from drops and shocks compared to mechanical hard disk drives. But they are still vulnerable in extreme cases:
| Hard Disk Drives | SSDs |
|---|---|
| Vulnerable moving parts like platters and heads | No moving parts, just non-volatile flash memory |
| Heads can crash onto platters | No physical damage to flash memory from impacts |
| Spindle motors can dislodge | No motors or bearings to break |
| Risk of scratching platters or bending arms | Encased flash memory chips unaffected by physical shocks |
However, SSD electronics could still get damaged, connections could loosen, or solder joints crack on a circuit board after an extremely hard impact. But overall SSDs don’t have a physical point of failure like drives do, so drops that would destroy a hard drive are much less likely to kill an SSD.
Do rugged and encrypted drives hold up better if dropped?
Drives marketed as rugged or designed for tough conditions generally have thick protective casings and internal shock protection to survive much longer drops than consumer models. For example:
- Solid state “rugged” drives can withstand 10+ foot drops.
- Special rugged hard disk drives endure 4-6 foot drops.
- Military spec drives can survive drops while operational.
- Encrypted drives have added physical protections built in.
But any drive will eventually fail if subjected to repeated drops from enough cumulative height. Rugged doesn’t equal indestructible. And a single unlucky fall on an edge or corner can still defeat shock defenses and destroy drives rated for higher average drops. So treat even rugged drives gently.
Typical failure rates from drops
These rough estimates illustrate how fragile hard drives can be:
- 10% fail from a 3 foot fall.
- 25% fail from 4 foot fall.
- 50% fail from 5+ foot fall.
- Near 100% failure rate if falling 10+ feet.
Failure rates are lower for SSDs:
- 1% fail after 3 foot fall.
- 5% fail after 6 foot fall.
- 10% fail after 10 foot fall.
But again, these numbers just provide a ballpark idea and real-world results depend on many specific variables. Anything above a few feet though carries high risk of failure.
Can you recover data yourself from a dropped drive?
Don’t attempt to open and repair a dropped drive on your own unless you’re an expert. But if the drive seems partially functional, you may be able to recover data yourself before it completely dies. Try connecting it externally to a computer through a SATA adapter or enclosure.
If detected, use data recovery software to urgently image the drive to another healthy drive, which allows extracting files later. Turning the dropped drive off and on as little as possible gives the best chance of copying data before failure. Just don’t continue using the damaged drive for long term storage.
Conclusion
Dropping a hard drive, especially over 3 feet, can easily damage components and cause data loss. But higher quality drives designed to be rugged offer much better shock resistance. While drops can instantly kill mechanical drives, SSDs are far less vulnerable. Still, no drive is immune to failure if dropped at a bad angle or onto a hard surface from high enough. So handle all drives gently and avoid moving them while powered on. And make sure your data is regularly backed up.
