First post on these alternative sites so forgive any mistakes. My external hard drive (a small travel one) was enclosed in a padded hard-shell case like this one but I’m still worried. When I went on vacation, I had the hard drive in a bag that I was dragging down the (carpeted) stairs. I don’t know if the protective case was intended to shock absorb something like that and had I realized sooner that the HDD was in the bag, I would’ve packed it away with the laptop instead.
Should I replace the drive before something happens or do those cases shock absorb?
I don’t know a ton about hard drive failures, but you could run a SMART check on it to read diagnostic data. It’ll give you a state of health, both impact related and general wear and tear. If that’s clean and the drive read/writes fine, in my experience its fine. As the other comment mentioned they’re far more durable when powered off than running. If travel is a concern, the external hard drive enclosures are generally just a 2.5” HDD with a Sata -> USB adapter. If it’s able to be disassembled, you can replace the hard drive with a solid state drive like this and gain more speed and durability.