My suggestion - don't drop them repeatedly, but don't expect them to fall apart when they're blown on. Don't abuse the drive - don't pinch the top and bottom edges when you pull them out of the PDA (try tape or find some way to hold onto the other edges of the drive), don't expose them to excessive heat or moisture, don't expose them to extreme cold, don't expect them to survive doing write processes while being shook up on a jackhammer or even a ride offroad, and don't get them wet.
If you keep it in your PDA, take good care of it (don't drop, don't heat or cool it overmuch, don't drop it in water, be careful when you pull it out of the PDA), it'll last at least a few years. Treat it like a HARD drive, and not a solid-state card, which might survive being run over or a drop into salt water after falling from 50000 feet.
They are sensitive while they spin. They spin while being accessed. They spin down fairly quickly when idle to protect themselves against drops and knocks, and to conserve battery life. When a modern Hitachi MicroDrive (3k3, 3k6 or newer) has spun down it is sufficiently insensitive to mechanical fatalities. (If you must know, I somewhat "confirmed" this with my 3k6...) The new Seagates should be as safe as the Hitachis. Like the haesslich guy said, vibration and extreme temperatures, amongst other environmental factors, should be avoided, too. To add to that I suggest you avoid EMPs from nuclear explosions. Those definitely will fry any MicroDrive ... ;)
I have had a 8gb micro drive for over 5 weeks now. I used it the same way I used my CF I 1gb card and under the same conditions. IMHO if you treat the micro drive (or for that matter your unit) the way you would treat an expensive camera you should have no issues. If you apply tape (like I have) to make removal of your micro drive easy DO NOT cover the tiny hole in the back of the drive. DO USE very very good packaging tape. Do a search of this site and you will find directions on how to apply and make the tape and its removal tab. Enjoy your micro drive, I have and its one of the best investments IMHO I have made as an addition to my X51V.
Think about how many people have droped their ipods which have an internal hard drive. While the ipods use a mini laptop hard drive, the drive is bigger and heavier. Microdrives were designed with portability in mind. You'd be surprised at how much vibration and what kind of drops they can survive. A few times while demoing some photo printers I've droped my seagate microdrive. And the drops were at a nice 5' height and landed on a solid cement floor.
Like 0gopogo said, their mostly sensitive when the disk spins and the needle is moving back and forth. If you were to drop it while it was reading/writing you could easily get currupted data. It's not likely that you'll truely damage the drive from a small drop, but if the needle is moving theres a higher chance of it scratching the disk surface. -- Then again if the disk is moving then it's probably inside a camera or PDA in which case it would likely absorb most of the impact.
__________________ IBM Thinkpad T43 Model 2687-D3U: Pentium M 1.8Ghz, 1.5GB, 14.1" SXGA+, DVD-RW, 60GB, Fingerprint Reader, & Windows XP Pro. DELL Axim X51v - Intel® 624MHz,256MB ROM,64MB SDRAM, 3.7 inch VGA 802.11b, Bluetooth, & 1100mAh Second Battery Axim Accessories: Seagate 8GB Compact Flash Microdrive, Sena Black & Blue Leather Case, Etymotic Research ER6i Isolator Earphones
Generally it's very very safe. I've tested the Hitachi Microdrives out and it took quite a hit to corrupt the data. (It was an accidental drop while playing music off microdrive :(
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MEMS (Micro ElectroMechanical System) technology, while not as tough as all solid state, is a lot tougher than regular hard drives. Just make sure it stays cool while in operation - the power supply circuitry is sensitive to heat.
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Originally Posted by A friend of mine who has a Linux kernel named after his girlfriend.
If I was VirtualBox, I could load my virtualization module into Hannah and boot up another kernel in the same address space.
Though I know prefer solid state
Microdrives should last as long as you treat your pda carefully which you should already be doing
personally backpacking my microdrive broke but so would an iPod under the presure
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