@FadedSpark: I once had a hard drive that was rated for 250Gs, so it could have survived a 250 meter drop. Might have needed a new circuit board, but the platters would have survived

the_sidewinder

@Xavoc: The SSD would have suffered greater stress outsite the protective shell of a laptop, the same way you would survive a car crash better inside a car than if you were ejected out the front window

the_sidewinder

@frigg: They tossed about 15 drives, three marketing supervisors....and a goat...for good measure

Rattierevolution

No jump cuts makes me happy. Had that been a regular harddrive the failure rate at that point is absolutely 0... There is no way it would take it.

FadedSpark

@Xavoc: I'm sorry. You fail at physics by not including every factor and providing a poor analogy. Please turn in your geek card at the door.

Zencyde

@D.E.P.C.: ...And be have a real-time, real-life voice-over.

D.E.P.C.

Do we know how many drives they tossed off the building before they got one to work?

(if it's 1/1 that's more impressive than 1/100).

frigg

Not only is it durable, but throwing it off a build renders one whiter, skinnier, and gives one the ability to teleport three stories.

D.E.P.C.

@Xavoc: these are some of the worst analogies i've ever read.

Adrian Covert

@7raczyk: Uh, right. So, if I tie a laptop to a cinder block, and drop both of them, they should both remain intact right? Because there's no difference (effectively) in the speed that they strike the ground. Never mind which one has more mass, and therefore a greater inertia.

And, outside of a few very ruggedized laptops, I can't say I've met many that were "well designed" as far as surviving a 3 story drop...

Xavoc

@buckeye17: I own a Macbook Pro. For as much as it cost me, I might as well have stuck my credit card in there to power it...

Xavoc

@Xavoc: If the SSD can survive the fall on its own then there's nothing to say it wouldn't survive inside a well designed laptop.

hooked-on-tronics

@Xavoc: Why would you stick your credit card into your laptop?

buckeye17

They did this years ago with TimeX watches. They would beat the shit out of them while being shot live and test it after wards. Most of the time they worked but there was the odd times when they failed. Either way, nice video, indeed impressive for a hard disk.

7raczyk

Uh, right. So, I can throw my credit card off of a building, and it will likely still work. That is, if I retrieve it before someone else steals it... Now, if I stuck that credit card into a laptop, and the credit card endured the stresses of the laptop's flexing and the shock wave from the impact rippling up through 5 lbs of hardware, I'm not sure my credit card would survive.

But, neat marketing strategy I suppose...

Xavoc

thats great. now if they can bring the prices down to something that i wont need a gov bailout plan for then i'd pick one up.

hiimcliff

But does it blend?

BadBoyNDSU

Next time, try with real-life testing and throw the whole laptop.

I don't see many people only dropping their hard-drives.

m-p{3}

thats kick ass, i might get that also to Xavoc

your a idiot

ZetaCrossfire

What does he have to screw or unscrew before he inserts the drive? If that little piece is in there to begin with (as it would be if the thing were actually in a machine or enclosure) does that make it more likely to fail the 3 story dive?

cpthook

@Xavoc: hmmm... not following. They remaining intact depends not only on impact, mass, speed, etc., also material properties. Any amount of glass vs any amount of iron... you get the drift, hopefully.

geodesigner

I already knew that the strong point of SSDs is it's durability. No moving parts makes all the difference.

But yeah, definitely makes a great advertising... lots of people still don't get the advantages of SSDs, specially after the "extremely faster" myth went down.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

@Xavoc: Uh, right.
Uh, right.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

Looks good to me. I'd like to move my office out to the parking lot.

DirtyBits

@cpthook:
It was most likely the hard drive caddy. As far as I know, all laptops have some type of mounting cage/caddy for the hard drive.

praetorian

@tanya.peacock: Wasn't it a waterproof external HDD?

shockwaver

@the_sidewinder: 250G's does not mean that it could survive a 250 meter drop. It means that it could withstand 250G's of acceleration or about 2450 m/s^2 acceleration. The height it could be dropped from would be determined by the material that hard drive was being dropped onto because a softer material would lead to a longer collision time, thus allowing a higher height. I doubt that the hard drive would survive a 250 meter fall, unless you could find a material thats softer than feathers...

ab3

@7raczyk: Citroen did it with some of their cars... pushed one off a 30 foot or so cliff, it rolled end over end and landed on its wheels, and they went around and rolled the windows up and down to show they still worked, got in and drove away. This was a 50s or so commercial, I think. All one cut.

StarChaser Tyger

They will find someway to make it's life span shorter, how else will they get us to buy more...

Avizzv92

I think Giz should get one of these drives and put it through the torture they did with that water proof tv was it? Or was it a water proof laptop?

Anyway, it was something really really durable. But I'd love to see SSDs get something of the same treatment.

Run over by car, truck, semi, poured coffee on top of, tossed about in a bag... you know that fun stuff.

tanya.peacock

@BadBoyNDSU: hmmmm i wonder......

segamanxero

@shockwaver: no it was a tv... i remember cause they poured orange juice allll over it. it was a very memorable picture for me, cause i always spill orange juice on my tv.

Charging_Mooses

@StarChaser Tyger: yeah, but just think of all the times they had to do it to get it right...

Charging_Mooses

@Avizzv92: They will shorten the usability life of the product the same way we do with HDDs now. You ran out of space, or want more space? New SSD

the_sidewinder

@ab3: If I understand correctly, the drive would experience a 250G stopping force when it hits the ground, if dropped at 250m (assuming no air resistance, et cetera)

But I'm too lazy and sleepy now to be doing any math

the_sidewinder

@the_sidewinder: you are wrong, ab3 is right. The decelleration depends on the velocity it is when it starts to impact the object, the amount that object "squishes" to absorb the impact, and the time it takes to squish.

dtemp

@Avizzv92:

Faster speeds and storage seem to do the trick in getting people to upgrade. I'm finding 1.5 terabytes isn't that much on my Windows Media Center PC recording tv shows.

addiktion

look while i spread peanut butter on this new fangled compact disc

*conveniently leaves the data side in his palm while he cakes the other side in goopy mess*

Gonzie

@dtemp:

Doesnt even depend on the time does it? Starting velocity, finishing velocity (0) and distance the material was compressed.

toreil

Flash memory does seem to be incredibly resilient.

Not all that long ago there was a a story about a student weather experiment that washed ashore and two SD memory cards used for logging were able to be read after prolonged exposure to seawater.

(I think one of them had to be sent to Sandisk because the connections corroded, but the data was still good.)

I love me some flash memory. It's the ginchiest.

strider_mt2k

@StarChaser Tyger: You sure that wasn't a Volkswagen? Or maybe the two car companies just had the same idea. The VW commercial does have multiple jumps, though.

[splicd.com]

buoyant

@strider_mt2k: BBC News reported on a memory card torture test, and the buggers survived just about everything except being nailed to a tree.

[news.bbc.co.uk]

buoyant

Some of you guys are off your rocker. That little test was done to prove the durability of the drives themselves, which the video does.

/slaps forehead

grspec

It's not like samsung is saying that a laptop can survive a three story fall. If it was, I'm sure the video would be entitled 'LAPTOPS WITH OUR DRIVES CAN FALL THREE STORIES WITHOUT SCREWING UP!!!1!!one!' If it can handle stresses like that and still boot, it just means that your data is more likely to be safe if your laptop falls. It's not that hard to pull a drive out and extract information. Lot harder it's broken.

UshaCanus

@m-p{3}:
Give them your laptop and I'm sure they will.

Otherwise, that would be irrelevant.

JEmlay

@7raczyk:
Cinder block? At some point in time, wind resistance will play a factor on these items. Which will hit the ground first, the cinder block or a piece of paper? Last time I checked it took a while for a piece of paper to float to the ground.

Weight and wind resistance people.....weight and wind resistance....you need a longer drop to test these theories.

JEmlay

The obvious question is: Can it fall four stories?

merebito

@Xavoc:
While I disagree with the notion that the SSD would survive LESS inside the laptop.....I don't really care...I'm still laughing my ASS OFF at the credit card jab at Apple.....HAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!

JEmlay

"Don't try this at home"??? WTF not?

JEmlay

@praetorian: You are correct sir!. most laptops need a caddy to mount in the laptop, and sometimes they are fitted with an adapter. Dells that use IDE HDDs need an adapter to make it fit there mobo connection.

Viva La Volvo

Did it boot Windows before it was dropped?

Barcard

It was a hard drive caddy. The laptop used looks like a Dell Latitude D820 or the such. There's a little plastic part that screws onto the end to keep the contour of the laptop and make it quickly & easily removable.

SaeedaJackal

after I had a catastrophic failure of a Westinghouse MyBook Drive ( it wasn't backed up at the time *sniff* ), I would love my next portable external drive to be an SSD. Price on once of those will hopefully not be too much of a impediment.

Mactacular