How much more can SSDs take fall damage compared to 2'5 HDDs?

Princess Luna · February 13, 2017

I use an old laptop which I take everywhere when I am not at the desktop, I take outside and all... the problem is sometimes I have stupid accidents like the one I had today, where my stupid dog who lives all around me was being stupid jumping and all around me and then got trap on the power wire and tried to flee running as fast as it could having me fall down on the floor and even though I tried my best to prevent the laptop to fall so it did, the laptop is fine though like the second time already with it the frigging HDD died due to the fall, this is annoying... like a lot annoying: any fall and these HDD die they feel worthless, I'll have to get a replacement for this laptop and this time I'll get the cheapest 120gb SSD I can find, will the SSD be more "fall resistant" than HDDs and help me not having such an annoying evening like I am having already or should I give up on the mobility since every time I by chance have it falling down I'll have to buy new expensive storage? >_>

mariushm · February 13, 2017

The SSD is made out of a plastic or aluminum case and inside the case there's a circuit board with chips soldered on the circuit board.

So the whole assembly will tolerate some mechanical shock and will tolerate some flexing, but up to a point... if the shock is too big the connections between the chips and the circuit board may break and you'll have intermittent connections between the circuit board and those chips.

If it's too much, the chips on the circuit board may even break in pieces.

Mechanical hard drives are more sensitive because there's read and write heads floating less than a mm from the surface of the discs inside (platters) when the drive works, so if there's a mechanical shock the heads will shake up and down touching the surface of the platters and potentially scratching it (and you'd lose data)

If the shock is big enough, the platters could even crack or break in pieces.

When the mechanical hard drive is off, the read/write heads are parked in a safe area outside the platters so there's less risk of damage.