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Comment by antimatter15

4 hours ago

Another fun calculation is that due to special relativity, a hard drive that is spinning gains a certain amount of mass due to the rotational kinetic energy and E=mc^2.

Assuming the platter is 100g, 42mm, spinning at 7200RPM, there is about 25J of rotational kinetic energy, whose mass equivalent is 2.8x10^-13g (0.28 femtograms).

Assuming 200 electrons per NAND floating gate with 3bits/cell TLC on a 2TB SSD, there would be 5.3x10^14 electrons, weighing about 0.5 femtograms.