Can light to moderate vibration cause disk damage?

[AKautz]

I have read that vibration, such as that caused by a dot matrix printer sharing a table with a desktop PC, can cause the PC's hard disk R/W head to crash into the disk platter(s), thereby corrupting data. Since having read such, I think it best to power down a PC before moving it even slightly, however, is damage from light to moderate vibration still an issue with today's hard drives, and if so, how are laptop hard drives able to cope?

Thanks for any insight,
Adam

 

[edfair]

Generally good to 40g of decelleration. Like dropping a drive from 1" onto brick.
I've never seen a dot matrix printer that could come anywhere near creating that much vibration.
I move them while powered up all the time with no problem. But I set them down easily and try not to drop them. Ed Fair
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