Considering that the needle hovers like mere nanometers over the disk, something as simple as loud noises would cause enough vibration to affect disk performance, so the force needed to permanently damage a disk is really, really small.
I always love seeing that video in the wild, but vibrations affecting performance and vibrations causing damage are two entirely different things, particularly because that performance drop might be the needle parking itself to avoid actual damage.
As a personal anecdote, I’ve once installed Windows on a laptop while sitting in the back row of a car driving on not-so-great roads and while I wouldn’t recommend it, the laptop was still good years later.
Speaking of, the entire concept of laptops wouldn’t have worked before SSDs became mainstream if HDDs were actually that fragile.
Considering that the needle hovers like mere nanometers over the disk, something as simple as loud noises would cause enough vibration to affect disk performance, so the force needed to permanently damage a disk is really, really small.
I always love seeing that video in the wild, but vibrations affecting performance and vibrations causing damage are two entirely different things, particularly because that performance drop might be the needle parking itself to avoid actual damage.
As a personal anecdote, I’ve once installed Windows on a laptop while sitting in the back row of a car driving on not-so-great roads and while I wouldn’t recommend it, the laptop was still good years later.
Speaking of, the entire concept of laptops wouldn’t have worked before SSDs became mainstream if HDDs were actually that fragile.