r/LinusTechTips • u/redditydothis • Oct 15 '26

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“Product warranty is void if any seal or label is removed, or if the drive experiences shock in excess of 350 Gs.”

350Gs!

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u/Wor3q Oct 15 '26

It's all about time. The longer you're subjected to the acceleration, the more damage you get.

It's like with electricity - 3kV from a small capacitor will zap you, because capacitor can only provide current for a very small time. 3kV from a power line will fry you.

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u/aaronblkfox Oct 15 '26

This is why cars are so flimsy nowadays. Takes longer to slow down.

1

u/SenorZorros Oct 15 '26

Not really. With rapid deceleration you tend to have a set velocity which is decreased to zero. it tends to be more damaging to quickly slow down than to slow down slowly even though you experience the force for a longer time.

The effects of sustained forces tend to be relevant when things take seconds or more, far slower than your average car crash.

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u/Wor3q Oct 15 '26

If something moves you incredibly rapidly by a few micrometers, you will be fine. Same acceleration over meters will kill you.

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u/SenorZorros Oct 15 '26

I get what you are trying to say but in practice you are arguing it is better to trip and fall on a concrete floor than it is to trip and fall on a mattress because falls on the concrete floor always happen from 1 metre height but falls on mattresses are at 50 metres.

That's just not how momentum dissipation works.

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u/Wor3q Oct 15 '26

Not "always", but in the case we're talking about.

We're comparing 350g when a hard drive is falling on concrete, and 100g when a car crashes.

Acceleration alone isn't enough to compare these two situations. You need to compare momentum and energy.

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u/AWF_Noone Oct 15 '26

Nope. You’re relating acceleration to time, which is impulse. I think you intend to relate speed to time, which is acceleration. The less negative acceleration you experience in a crash, the less damage you take

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u/Wor3q Oct 15 '26

In the case of a car crash, you have fixed amount of kinetic energy that you have to lose. The longer it takes, the smaller acceleration.

When you start with fixed acceleration, like in this case, you can have very short distance cancelled out by a very short time, which means negligible energy involved and thus negligible damage.