How susceptible are hard drives in new computers to damage from vibration? Because of space considerations, I want to put a treadmill in the same room as my computer. My house is on a crawl space. Is that likely to cause a problem for my computer?

Scleros

Interesting question. I don't believe so. Typical maximum operating shock for current desktop drives is around 60 Gs. I haven't observed increased failure rates for drives I've installed in industrial or vehicular applications which encounter far worse vibration. In any case there are several simple things that could be done to uncouple the computer from the floor to reduce and improve vibration resistance:

• Don't sit computer on the floor.
• Add thick rubber bumper feet to computer if it doesn't already have them.
• Sit computer on towel, carpet, foam pad, etc.
• Purchase and install anti-vibration hard drive mounting kit.
• Use notebook drive.

Gekko

I pound away on my Treadmill which is on a wood floor 1m away from my PCs. They seems to handle it fine and there's been no interuption/failure of movies that are being played while I'm running.