[ranma42]

I've been mounting my 3.5" hard drives on those "fad" rubber band 5.25" drive bay adapters for decades and have not noticed any increased failure rate at all. Sure, seek time may be worse, but the reduced noise has been worth it for me.

[userbinator]

The problem isn't just slower seeks; it's when vibration causes the head to go off-track and write data where it shouldn't, faster than the servo can correct. Track pitch in modern hard drives is only a few dozen nanometers.

[justsomehnguy]

I think OP is talking about something quite different.

Can you give a pic or link on what you are using?