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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Effects of vibrations on equipment

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Hi

Just wondering what the long term effects are on our equipment. Specifially laptops and external drives. Obviously the loud music in the clubs causes the equipment to vibrate.

I was wondering what everybody does to protect their laptops and external harddrives from damage. Or should we even worry about it?

Any suggestions or advice?


DJ JumpinJim
 
Posted Sun 14 Sep 08 @ 4:25 pm
The vibrations can cause issues with hard drives true....some people here have posted links and pictures of how they have their hrad drives isolated....
 
vibration can definitly be an issue. i used to just let it go unchecked, but after one fun filled incident - that happened before we were open for the night, thank God - i check USB connections and all the rest that arent hard wired on a weekly basis and have both computers isolated with carpet under them.
and ounce of prevention.. etc.
 
Only had one night of trouble several years ago when doing a guest spot at Sandy Station near Salt Lake City the bass was so monsterous it was physically shaking the drive so bad it kept "resetting" and the program could not find it (this was when I was using PCDJ FX before I had heard of VDJ...after the third time in the first hour we finally had to open up a box of bar napkins and set it in there....worked like a charm after that the rest of the night!

As far as long term effects I have an external audio driveI have been using for almost 2 years with no problem...I have to keep upsizing my video drive every 6 months it never gets long term exposure.
 
I think you’re more likely to damage your gear loading and unloading it and transporting it, I thought this is what you men’t. As far as bass vibration goes my experience is that if you’re behind the speakers your ok.
 
Regarding vibrations, the better laptops have hard drives that are vibration resistant. For rackmounts and externals, you should be using enterprise edition hard drives. They are specifically designed for high vibration environments that are encountered in server rooms. My original system consists of 8 enterprise edition WD hard drives and has not experienced any issues in the 3 years that it has been in use.
 
I dropped my WD MyBook 500gb External HD down a flight of stairs, (more like a ladder) at the club about a month ago. Still works just fine.

I figure if it can withstand THAT, a little bass rumble won't kill it. (but I carry 2 backups with me)

Seriously, Vibrations CAN hurt HD's over time but it takes a whole lot to do damage from vibrations. For a HD in a laptop, it gets more of a vibration workout just from typing.
 
Most Laptops these days are drop tested to eliminate such problems.
 


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