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I've purchased a new HGST HTS721010A9E630 2.5 inch hard drive. The same day I dropped it inside my bag from approximately 6 inch (15 cm) height in vertical position and it landed on its side where the SATA connectors are. The thickness of the bag's bottom is about 1 mm. The bag was on the floor of a train. The floor wasn't covered with any linoleum or rug or carpet. The hard drive was inside a plastic sealed bag in which it comes from the factory. The plastic bag adjoins the hard drive closely. The environment was quite quiet and I heard a clearly audible impact sound.
I know that the weight of the drive is 115 g, (maximum) non-operating shock (half-sine wave) is 1000 G/1 ms. The drive wasn't operating at the time, of course, but just in case I'll mention that the (maximum) operating shock (half-sine wave) is 225 G/1 ms and 400 G/2 ms. The price of the drive is $56.
I want to know whether this shock is significant or negligible, because the drive has not been unpacked and I can easily replace or return it for free in the shop where I bought it, except that the shop is located in another city, so it would take several hours for me to travel there. I don't remember dropping hard drives ever before throughout my 20 years of experience with computers, I'm not good at physics and searching the web (for about 2 hours) doesn't work for me, that's why I need your help guys.
Something like a formula where I can put in the weight of the drive, the height of the fall and stopping distance (and then have the G as a result) would be very good, but also I want to know what amount of G is considered significant or negligible for such a hard drive and can such shock cause any after effects or decrease the drive's lifetime.
UPDATE:
I've remembered that I dropped Western Digital My Book from about 10 inch (25 cm) height onto linoleum. It's S.M.A.R.T. doesn't show whether there were registered shocks or not, but the drive is safe and sound. And by the way, most probably I killed my Western Digital WD3200BPVT by using it on the road. It's S.M.A.R.T. is showing "G-sense Error Rate" like this: current - 1, worst - 1, data - 69580. So I had both OK and bad experiences of shocking my HDDs before.
1https://endevco.com/news/archivednews/2009/2009_02/tp321.pdf https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/resources/TS-7K1000-ds.pdf – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams – 2017-11-25T00:23:03.720
@Ignacio, thank you. I've already visited endevco.com link, but I didn't understand anything. There is a table there - does it mean that the shock was 280 G if pulse width was 1 ms and the height was 6 inches? – Gary Dekker – 2017-11-25T00:54:08.650
why would you return it? it would be your fault you dropped it and broke it (if it was broken), not the store's or the manufacture's – Keith M – 2017-12-08T06:20:31.170
@KeithM, this is of course, not the question here, but I just want to have a reliable fully functioning hard drive and I don't have the resources to buy more than one hard drive. Also I believe that Western Digital would do the same if they were in my position - you can only follow the law - this is what happens when you meet a stranger in the Alps – Gary Dekker – 2017-12-08T07:57:23.917