How reliable are hard drives in MP3 players?

[Malc]

I posted the following in the MP3 group, but got no response. It's really a hard drive question anyway...

I'm marathon runner in training. I would love to have tunes to listen to. It would seem that MP3 players would be ideal for me. However, the ones at a decent price all seem to have hard drives in them. I can't see how it would take all the pounding from my running... I can just imagine the heads crashing all the time.

A friend of mine has suggested that with these new micro drives that the head arms are short enough now that a head crash isn't so likely. Coupled with caching so reads only occur occasionally, he thinks it would be fine for running. Perhaps my long experience (15+ years) of crashing hard drives and losing data and money has made me overly paranoid?

What do people think?

 

[Stain]

I wouldn't know how long they are really made to last but I have a friend with a Nomad Jukebox and another with an IPOD and neither have had problems. They have both been fairly well abused dropped an the like but I'm not to sure if they could hold up to years of running, thumping around like that. For jogging I would have to recomend using a memory based MP3 player, reasons being (generally) smaller, lighter, and more durable so it would be less of a hassle to run with. But if your running long distance and need more than a couple of hours of tunes then go for a microdrive MP3 player. If your paranoid just get the extended warrenty