Hard drive survival camp victims endure tortuous tests

May 1, 2000
Web posted at: 4:28 PM EDT (2028 GMT)

By Richard Stenger
CNN Interactive Staff Writer

MILPITAS, California (CNN) -- Thousands of unlucky computer components undergo torture tests every year at a hard drive survival camp in California. The only trial missing from the Quantum Corp.'s testing facility in Silicon Valley is an angry gorilla hurling metal disk platters against the wall.

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Take drop shock test number five. A technician hesitates, then pushes a colorful button. A machine instantaneously hurls a victim to the floor fast enough to obliterate a passenger along for a ride into a splatter of red pulp and tiny black bits.

"The watermelon drop on the drop tower represents what the drive goes through in a shock event. It's a visual way to see what forces are involved in the test," said Luc Moyen, Director of Design Assurance for Quantum, a worldwide supplier of PC hard drives.

"In the test that we do here, we try to capture all the different stages that a drive goes through in a day in the life of the disk drive," he said in a statement.

Each drive model tested generates 10 gigabytes of test data. In comparison, the largest encyclopedia comprises about 1.3 gigabytes, according to Quantum.

Most push the hard drives to punishing extremes. A depressurization chamber simulating an altitude of 40,000 feet removes most of the air around a disk drive and pops a companion balloon. An oven chamber heats up another enough to fry an egg on it. After each, the hard drives manage to keep on ticking.

Other sophisticated tests measure electromagnetic fields and acoustic levels. But they all have one simple purpose, making hard drives stronger.

"For the end user, there's probably nothing more important than protecting hard drive against failure," said Rob Katz, vice president of marketing, in a statement. "If the hard drive crashes, it takes with it personal data and information that in many cases can't be replaced."

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