[Context if needed on them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive), A few old ones I own stopped working due to their spin, and I’m curious to see why it happened to both of them
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Hard drives, even the old ones, are a marvelous feat of precision engineering made affordable only through the massive scale of their production.
Precision is a fundamental requirement that enables them to function in the first place, and it is provided, among other things, by a set of tiny bearings the spindle of the motor sits on.
With time, the ball bearings and the bearing races they run through experience wear and can no longer provide the tolerance required to keep the spinning disks stabilized in place. This eventually leads to repeat read/write head crashes, excessive vibration, ball bearings seizing after coming to a full stop and other things.
Some of these are direct mechanical malfunctions, others are conditions under which the drive can no longer perform its functions so the firmware just taps out.
Notably, while the old drive is running [and has potentially been running for the past 15 years] it’s in a state of mechanical equilibrium. Powering such an old drive down runs a serious risk of it not powering back on again.
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