[dngortegae]

What would happen if you pulled the power from a hard drive while it was on?

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It'd stop spinning.

You'd also run the risk of ruining the circuit board on the HD, electocuting yourself (as power to the connector in question is still going) and run the risk of permantly damaging the mechanics. And as it would be considered a hard shutdown, you run the risk of data loss as well. Plus your system would probably lock up, having not been designed to work with a drive that's just had the power ripped out.

No, it won't be covered by any warranties you may have on it or any other parts in the system if the drive is damaged.

[Neil Jones]

It'd stop spinning.

You'd also run the risk of ruining the circuit board on the HD, electocuting yourself (as power to the connector in question is still going) and run the risk of permantly damaging the mechanics. And as it would be considered a hard shutdown, you run the risk of data loss as well. Plus your system would probably lock up, having not been designed to work with a drive that's just had the power ripped out.

No, it won't be covered by any warranties you may have on it or any other parts in the system if the drive is damaged.

[Kemasa]

Anything from nothing, data corruption, to a head crash.

In other words it is not a good idea, especially if the disk is doing something at the time power is disconnected. In general, nothing will happen if the disk is idle at the time since that is basically what happens when you turn off the computer. It used to be that you had to park the heads, but most drives today are self parking and have enough time to deal with that as the power goes down.

You will not get electrocuted since the voltage to the disk is low and you need around 40v and above to get electrocuted. At lower voltages you can still get burned if there is a short and enough current is possible.

The real question is why would you ever want to do that.

[dngortegae]

Its not that I would want to do it. I had my primary drive siting on top of my system doing a test and it fell, unplugged itself and then my system shut down. I am trying to see what could be the result of that.

[warriorscot]

Well that would be the result, if you put the drive back does it work ok.

[Kemasa]

Dropping a drive while it is spinning is typically not good, which was not originally mentioned. But as was said, see if it works. If not, it is broken.

You might want to check the disk for errors (read test) and make sure that nothing is bad, or you might want to first backup everything that you need from it, just in case.