Everything You Need to Know About Hard Drive Vibration (2016)

Postedabout 2 months agoActiveabout 1 month ago

asdefghyk

2 points

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ept.caTechstory

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Hard Drive VibrationData StorageHardware Reliability

Key topics

Hard Drive Vibration

Data Storage

Hardware Reliability

Article about hard drive vibration and its implications.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

Peak period

96-108h

Avg / period

2.6

Key moments

01Story posted
Nov 20, 2025 at 11:07 AM EST
about 2 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Nov 24, 2025 at 6:11 PM EST
4d after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
7 comments in 96-108h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Nov 26, 2025 at 1:39 PM EST
about 1 month ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (1 comments)

Showing 13 comments

nefarious_ends

about 2 months ago

2 replies

I recall a video of a guy temporarily reducing hard drive performance by shouting at it

29athrowaway

about 2 months ago

1 reply

That is not just any guy though. He is the guy.

elijahwright

about 2 months ago

The guy if you care about systems performance, in a detailed way, for sure!

Someone ask him how many OS kernel bugs he’s found now? He finds the weirdest things… a tally would be “interesting”.

amelius

about 2 months ago

next try shouting at a wafer stepper

hinkley

about 2 months ago

1 reply

It seems like drives would be better off with their own built in isolation. Wonder why it doesn’t work out that way. Elasticity of the materials and the gap between the axle and the arm? Space?

rasz

about 1 month ago

1 reply

Some laptops, Toughbooks and Thinkpads come to mind, mounted drive on foam pads or in rubber gaskets. A lot of MFM era drives up to mid eighties used to suspend mechanical part on rubber isolated posts.

hinkley

about 1 month ago

Thinkpads also introduced accelerometers to park the heads when a laptop leaves a desk before it can hit the ground. Seems like at some point they decided the extra square millimeters were more useful for something else, like making the laptop a half a mm thinner.

jmpman

about 1 month ago

1 reply

The best drive enclosures I’ve worked on used laminated steel. Steel-plastic-steel in order to absorb the vibrations. Worked great, but for some reason this isn’t widely used in the industry, as if the laminated steel guys don’t have good sales people.

ahartmetz

about 1 month ago

1 reply

My main desktop computer is in an Antec P180 case. Most / all? of its outer panels are made of aluminum - plastic - aluminum material. They make a particular dull sound when knocked.

jmpman

about 1 month ago

1 reply

I’m talking about drive enclosures made by storage companies. The EMC, NetApp, IBM, HP type of places. Consumer grade cases all use the cheapest sheet metal they can find.

ahartmetz

about 1 month ago

The P180 has these walls for their sound dampening properties. The material is for sure not cheaper than mild steel, which is what cheap cases are made of.

jmclnx

about 2 months ago

I could not get to the article, so from the wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250613075332/https://www.ept.c...

vivzkestrel

about 2 months ago

curl -I -X GET www.ept.ca/features/everything-need-know-hard-drive-vibration/ curl: (28) Failed to connect to www.ept.ca port 80 after 75027 ms: Couldn't connect to server Not using any VPNs from my end

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ID: 45994124Type: storyLast synced: 11/22/2025, 5:19:00 AM

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