Vibration characteristics of hard disk drives with different internal air pressures

Hard disk drive (HDD) performance and reliability at different environments are the interests and concerns of HDD researchers, engineers and consumers. This paper reports the experimental investigation of HDD vibration characteristics with different internal air pressures. Experiments are done by placing the HDD samples inside an altitude chamber and the vibrations are measured using a Laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) and all-in-one (AIO) motor tester. The disk drive read/write test, vibration spectrum of actuator & suspension tip and disk flutter measurements reveal that the air pressure significantly affects the vibration behaviors of hard disk drive components and the system performances.