How To Protect Your Hard Disk Drive Against Electrostatic Shock

by Ali Jamalan

If you’ve ever walked across a thick carpet and felt a shock after
touching a grounded object (or shocked a friend on purpose) you know
about the general effects of static electricity. But do you know how it
works, or how damaging it can be to computer components? Although it
may seem a bit silly and unimportant, “static shock” or Electrostatic
Discharge (ESD) can cause significant damage to your hard drive.
Comparable to a lighting bolt damaging a tree, ESD can act like a bomb
exploding in your drive, blowing apart parts of the circuit board. But
don’t worry – if you follow a few simple steps you can ensure you’re
well protected and avoid letting a minor thing like ESD cause major
problems.

WHAT IS ESD?
ESD or "static shock" is a portion of an imbalanced high voltage field
on a non-conductive surface (e.g. your hand, the carpet, a screwdriver)
that has just moved to a conductive surface in a rapid, uncontrolled
fashion. "Static electricity" is the same portion of an imbalanced high
voltage field on a nonconductive surface, but it has not yet reached
the point of releasing it's electrons to equalize the imbalance between
a conductor with a greater positive charge than itself. This imbalanced
high voltage field will not "discharge" until conditions are right,
that is until the number of electrons the charge grabs from around its
location builds to a point in which no more electrons can be sustained.
When a conductive surface of some type gets within 'jumping" distance,
the process of equalising the electrical field is experienced.

Imbalanced high voltage fields are everywhere, constantly flowing over
and around us, and people feel them because we are good conductors. The
shock you sometimes get when touching a door knob after shuffling
across the carpet is made in the same way a thunderstorm makes a
lightning bolt.

Some Examples of Voltage:

• 3,000 volts - the average human can't feel voltage below this
threshold.
• 8,000 volts - yawning and stretching with clothes on.
• 15-20,000 volts - shoving a plastic-coated box across the carpet with
foot.
• 18,000 volts - getting up from a foam cushion on a nylon-covered
couch.
• 35,000 volts - walking across a typical carpet.5

WHAT CAN ESD DO?
While ESD won’t kill you, it can definitely kill your computer
components. While it takes an electrostatic discharge of 3,000 volts
for you to feel a shock, much smaller charges, well below the threshold
of human sensation, can and often do damage semiconductor devices. Many
of the more sophisticated electronic components can be damaged by
charges as low as 10 volts.

ESD damage occurs when a charge on a hand or tool finds a path of
lesser resistance from itself to a drive. If the energy of that charge
is larger than the amount of energy the drive can safely dissipate,
damage may occur.

Especially sensitive to ESD are integrated circuits: processors,
memory, cache chips and expansion cards. This damage can be immediate,
resulting in melting, junction breakdown or oxidation. Even scarier,
you could electrocute your drive and never even know it – the effects
of ESD are difficult to trace and often do not affect the drive until
several days to several months after the ESD occurrence.

PREVENTION TIPS
Luckily, a few simple steps can help you avoid ESD damage and promote
long life for your disk drive.

• Keep your drive in an ESD bag until you handle it – an ESD bag is
specially designed to prevent ESD.

• Always wear an ESD wrist strap grounded to an unpainted surface on
the chassis of your computer.

• If a wrist strap is unavailable, touch an unpainted surface on the
chassis of your computer before handling your drive.

• Only touch the connector pins on your drive with the proper cabling
ends or jumpers. Never use a bare finger or non-insulated tool.

• Protect your drive from sources of high voltage power such as fans or
vacuum cleaners.

• Never try to plug a power or data cable into a drive unless power to
the box is completely off.

Finally, by controlling the temperature, you can also help limit ESD.
By increasing the relative humidity of the room where the computer is
located, you can greatly reduce build-up of ESD. Static builds up more
readily in dry environments than in moist ones; this is why you get
zapped much more often in the winter time in northern climates than in
summer.

So what happens if by some freak accident your hard drive experiences
ESD and your data is lost? Don’t panic, because your best solution is
only a phone call away. Many ‘Data Recovery’ companies have experience
dealing with hard drives damaged by ESD and will apply the most
advanced technology in the industry to perform data recovery.
Contacting these immediately upon discovering ESD damage is the best
option to keep you and your clients working and productive.

Knowing that ESD exists is the first step in prevention. By following
ESD handling procedures and understanding the dynamics behind “static
electricity,” you can ensure that working with a hard drive is never a
shocking experience.

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hard disk drives (IDE/SATA, diskettes, memory sticks and flash cards.
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