"Anthony Fremont" wrote in message
...
Just tipping a drive over on a hard table (like one in an external case that
has 0 shock protection, like most of them have) can kill the drive by
subjecting it to hundreds of G's of impact. If it's running, it's almost a
guaranteed a head crash.

I can pretty much vouch for that... I tipped one like that over a couple years
ago (it was a Buffalo Drivestation -- no internal padding), and while it
didn't immediately die, it became unreliable and many files were no longer
retrievable. So it probably had a head crash -- just not one that completely
trashed the head.

I'm also guilty of one having a hard drive just sitting on a case's frame (the
case cover removed) and bumping it a bit such that the frame shorted across
the drive's controller board, immediately killing it. :-) In that case a
controller board swap brought it back to life.