Just drop it

‘Matthew Glenholme needs to dig out his old physics books and do a bit of revision,’ says Tim Yates, a former physics teacher, following our correspondent’s calculation on the shock that his hard drive suffers when it falls off a desk.
‘Apparently his hard drive has reached just under mach 3 on its way to the bin. Perhaps he should throw his calculations in the bin and hang on to his hardware?’
Trevor Anderson attaches his calculations, which show an impact of about 20G – so don’t panic that you’ll exceed the Seagate 75G limit unless your desk is stacked vertically on top of several others to save office space. Which still leaves the question: how will you know if the drive has suffered a 75G acceleration?
‘Maybe they contain some kind of miniature accelerometer, like those glass widgets you can put in packing cases to see if they have been dropped in transit. They probably hide it under the label that says “Do not remove this label”,’ says Phil Britton at Granada Learning. Go on, have a look.