why are laptop hdd so fragile

Philip Lindley · Jul 25, 2013

I bought a HP laptop 14 months ago the hdd already died. It has a plastic enclosure.
My 7 year old toshiba has metal case. It still works. I'm sure its been dropped etc.way more but its still ticking. Friends tell me that manufacture's are just building for planned failure true?

Tradesman1 · Jul 25, 2013

Depending on model, manufacturers may skimp here and there to keep prices competitive and add to profit margin, however, laptops for the most part have always been 'fragile'

unreal9400 · Jul 25, 2013

Vibration or moving around the laptop while the hard drive is accessing file.
Or it can be a sudden drop which will make a big impact on the hard drive.

jossrik · Jul 25, 2013

Just to clarify, engineers always build for failure, no matter what they're designing. I remember one telling me that he could design a car that you would never need to replace, it would never rust, never break down, but the cost would be so high that no one NO ONE could afford one. I live in FL and here we get hurricanes, and the houses are built to withstand them, some are built to 150 MPH winds, some higher, but all are designed to fail at some point.

The casing on a HDD has little to do with how long it lasts. Most laptop HDDs are made to with stand a drop, but not necessarily a drop while running, if the disc is spinning and the head is reading or writing, there's a good chance to knock it off kilter, ruining the HDD. Other than shock, general wear and tear, they do just go bad eventually without any real reason, usually there are warning signs, but it does happen.

manofchalk · Jul 25, 2013

Because they are mechanical (Things are physically moving) parts that operate on tolerances that are thinner than a fraction of a hairs width, that tend to be thrown around a fair bit while in use.
If you drop a HDD while its running, very good chance the impact will make the read head and platter collide. When the platter is spinning at 7200RPM and the read head is smaller than the head of a pin, you can imagine what happens.

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why are laptop hdd so fragile

Philip Lindley

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Tradesman1

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manofchalk

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