guys this is gonna be a very fun video
because we get to wreck a hard drive in
multiple ways and I know that many of
you myself included have always probably
been very careful when handling a laptop
to make sure you don't shake it too much
worried about that hard drive getting
damaged but you may have wondered I know
I have about just how much damage can
you really do by shaking the hard drive
and how hard would you really have to
shake it to completely break it so
that's what we're gonna do today and
we're gonna kind of take things to the
extreme and not only are we just going
to shake it by hand the boring way we're
gonna actually use a specialized piece
of equipment known as a vortex ER
normally used in scientific laboratories
to mix things and basically just shake
the hell out of whatever you put on it
and yes of course we're going to strap a
hard drive to it oh and yeah obviously
while it's running and you can see on
this particular vortex so there are
three settings for one thousand two
thousand and a maximum of three thousand
and just for a little bit more fun we're
gonna throw in a few surprises towards
the end so I think you guys are gonna
enjoy this one so why don't we just jump
right in oh and of course don't forget
to follow me on Instagram I got a shill
that's social media so you can follow me
on there it's just at Theo Chu so let's
take a look and I'll explain the setup
pretty quickly I have a laptop and in
there I attached a SATA extension cable
so I can plug the hard drive directly
into the motherboard so the drive is not
running off USB or anything it's booting
just as if it was inside the computer
and this Drive I'm going to be using is
a 2.5 inch 7200 rpm Drive so Windows is
running and what I'm gonna do is play
one of my videos off the drive so if the
video stops playing that obviously means
the drive is having issues so it should
be pretty obvious to see what's going on
so to start off we're going to shake it
a bit and you can already see just
shaking it by hand a tiny bit freezes up
the drive so the video stops playing
momentarily and I wasn't even shaking it
that hard I was actually surprised and
of course it does go back right away and
start playing again so this doesn't kill
the drive obviously but it does freeze
it just a bit and I believe what's going
on is most modern hard drives I think
have some sort of features in there
that kind of frees the drive head if
enough g-force is applied and that's
just a common sense safety feature in
there and also we can bring up the
resource monitor and use that to kind of
look at the drive stats while this is
being shook and you can kind of see even
though it's a little bit dark what's
happening here with the drive activity
being green it stops completely when you
shake the drive and also in blue that's
the action cue and you can see that
builds up
so basically when the drive is being
shook the video stops and then it builds
up a queue for actions to take once it's
ready to go again and then it continues
so clearly there are no major issues
here just shaking it by hand and we can
go and try the vortex or the fun part
so I can strap it down and we'll start
off on the low setting of 1000 and right
away after it starts the video stops and
we can try to navigate Windows doesn't
seem to be working completely here so
the drive is totally locked up while
shaking at least but windows it hasn't
crashed completely or anything widows is
still running in the RAM and all that
and I did click on a few things in the
Explorer and after I do stop the shaking
and give it a second you'll notice that
both the windows I tried to open before
open now because it queued up that and
then it loads it off the drive once it's
ready now we can try it again at 2000
and obviously if it stopped at 1000 its
stopping again at 2000 and I was
actually able to open a Explorer window
here but again it freezes when I try to
navigate into another folder and then it
loads when I stop it so no surprises
there so now at this point let's try the
maximum of 3000 and it shook it's so
hard here that the cable pretty much
fell out right away it wasn't secured
enough I tried to plug it back in before
windows crashed or anything but it
didn't like that I still had to restart
the computer and luckily it did actually
boot again so we can keep going and do
more tests so this time I repositioned
it with rubber band to hold the plug in
better so I put it back on max after it
was booted again and let it go for a
little while stopped and started it but
I could not get it to kill the drive
completely it kept recovering at least
for now there's a
a bit more we're gonna do in a bit now I
did take some super slow-motion footage
of the drive shaking and 960 FPS so
that's pretty cool to see here and it
does really bounce this thing around
like crazy I was actually a little bit
more surprised about how much bigger
this thing had and again you can see the
cable fell out this time too and the
drive just kind of flew off to the side
so this thing is really getting knocked
around I put it back on more secured and
again it's you can see it's getting
knocked up and down in sideways every
which way it's not just being spun
around this thing's really taking a
beating now before we get to some of the
really crazy stuff I thought I would do
a quick test the same way with an SSD a
solid-state drive as so I hooked that up
the same way started playing a video and
you can see it does not actually stop
that video at all it keeps continuously
reading off the drive
because SSDs have no moving parts so it
doesn't care about being shook and if
you look at the resource monitor you'd
see that the green activity graph
doesn't stop at all even on the high
speeds of being shaken it doesn't stop
at all at this point I really wanted to
kill the hard drive so I put it on while
unplugged for a bit and just kind of let
it run for a minute and then I put it on
its side and did plug it in so kind of a
different angle thinking maybe that
would do it and while it was running but
again even doing that the drive still
would not dies these things can actually
take quite a bit of a beating apparently
I mean I thought this thing would be
broken pretty quickly but it actually
did hold up I was really impressed and I
wasn't sure how much more it would take
to break it by putting this on a shaker
so I figured you know what instead of
waiting around let's just see what would
happen if we open up the drive while
it's running so yes I unscrewed this
thing and took off the cover while it
was running of course using safety
glasses safety first I didn't want the
platter shattering in my eyes I actually
didn't notice any issues until I finally
unscrewed that last Center screw below
the label and right away after I did
that I started hearing like a
high-pitched screeching and only then
did the video start to stutter a bit and
the noise and stuttering became really
really obvious after I took off the cut
completely while it was running I guess
some air gotten there or maybe it wasn't
as secure or something like that
now I bet you guys know what's coming
next obviously we have to put this thing
on the shaker while open while running
it is the natural next step right so
here is a super slow-motion view of that
happening it's open running on the
shaker and you'll notice it does stop
moving the drive head when it's wobbling
so that's kind of what I expected was
going on before but at some point you
can see the drive head at least once
wobble back and forth a bit and maybe
even drift a tiny bit more towards the
center of the dry so it does seem to be
doing something and I also took another
one of a super close-up slow-motion and
kind of forgive the reflection of the
light and there's actually nothing too
interesting here I tried to restart and
stop the shaking while it was moving
pretty quickly so it wouldn't have too
much time to stay stopped but even then
the drive seemed surprisingly stationary
now obviously this drive is not usable
anymore it's completely useless and I
wondered if it would actually boot after
all this and the answer is no it does
not boot it just makes a horrible
screeching sound and then crashes before
windows can even boot and you can
actually hear it click a few times if
you listen closely the drive head is
slapping something in there I don't know
if this Drive we killed it basically but
it was not necessarily from the shaking
it was probably just from opening it up
so yeah I think that concludes the
experiment if you guys want to keep
watching I did some other experiments
where I like delete the windows registry
and delete system32 I'll put a couple
links right here you can just click on
those I would love to hear what you guys
think I'm looking forward to hearing
from you down with comments so I hope to
see you guys next time and have a good
one