A. Factors that can contribute to early hard-drive death include jarring or dropping the computer while the system is on and the drive is spinning.

My hard drive was spinning.

The drive spins a helically grooved wheel that engages the similarly grooved inside face of the spindle segments.

And for a year they had these five drives spinning, pounding on them and on TrueCrypt, just trying to guess the password using their Dictionary.

You'd hear the drive spin down.

Three months later the drive is still spinning.

Steve Gibson is in his laboratory watching hard drives spin.

And that can be dicey if the hard drive is not spinning at a constant pace.

When nothing can be recovered - typically when drives cannot spin or data has been overwritten - DriveSavers charges a $200 inspection fee.

Since most modern drives spin at rates between 5,400 and 15,000 RPM, the damage caused to the magnetic coating can be extensive.