Yo team—I need to expand on my previous HDD shouting post because it deserves way more detail than the short version gave you. Here’s what was going on under the hood: modern high-density HDDs pack data onto platters so tightly that read/write heads have to stay within nanometers of their intended track, and even tiny acoustic vibrations from nearby machinery or ambient noise can nudge the head just enough to trigger error correction retries instead of clean reads. This is where the slow down actually comes from—not a slowdown in rotational speed, but repeated seek and write recovery cycles as the drive tries to recalibrate itself after being nudged off-center. It's also why this is primarily a data center issue; dense server racks amplify ambient vibration through shared chassis and close proximity of dozens of spinning drives, which is exactly the environment where acoustic damping panels are already standard practice.

I should add that while this doesn't apply to SSDs—no moving parts means no head positioning issues from vibrations—it does highlight a broader engineering truth about mechanical storage being increasingly sensitive to physical conditions as density goes up. This isn't just some retro tech anecdote; it was one of the fundamental design considerations for high-density drives over 15 years, and you can still see its influence in modern data center construction with dedicated acoustic treatment that keeps vibration below critical levels. It's a great example of how even "solved" engineering problems keep influencing new designs as performance targets get pushed closer to physical limits.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/storage/17-years-ago-one-engineer-made-a-very-important-discovery-if-you-shout-at-data-centre-HDDs-they-slow-down/