A recent post on StorageMojo has some interesting numbers on how
vibrations can affect disks, especially consumer drives:
http://storagemojo.com/2010/05/19/shock-vibe-and-awe/
He mentions a 2005 study that I wasn''t aware of. In its conclusion it
states:
> Based on the results of these measurements, it was determined that
> the effects of vibration can be
> observed and quantified. Furthermore, it demonstrates that [Consumer
> Storage (CS)] disk drives are more sensitive to the vibration from
> physically coupled adjacent disk drives [than Enterprise-class disk
> drives]. However, even though the CS drives are more sensitive to
> vibration, there was no evidence of data corruption when the
> vibration affected write operations.
https://dtc.umn.edu/publications/reports/2005_08.pdf
Another study gives numbers of 20% decrease in IO throughput, 25%
increase completion time, and 25% increase in energy consumption.
Probably not a big deal for home use, but it can certainly add up if
you''ve got lots of shelves.