Does Leather absorb drop shocks? IPod Classic Help!! :(?

[MrAwesomee]

I have a new Ipod classic 7th gen, which has a built-in moving hard drive. When those things drop you run a risk of breaking it because of the HDD. So I was at the gym working out, and listing to music with my Ipod Classic, and of course I have a leather case for my Ipod classic this one to be exact igadgitz Black Genuine Leather Case Cover from amazon

Its made out of real leather which fits nice and compact, plus its well-padded without being bulky, a medium thickness.

When I was changing songs on my Ipod in the gym I caught someone that was in need of assistance through my peripheral vision. The person who was benching was struggling real hard to get the bar back on the stand and was in real trouble. Without thinking I quickly dropped my Ipod classic on the floor (a 3-4 feet drop on a rubber like gym floor) inorder to help that person. Its a new Ipod, and fortunately it was inside the leather case so there were no damage to the exterior. I picked it up and everything appeared to function normally, but I have a small OCD with new things, and like my stuff in tip-top shape. Does Leather absorb drop shocks? and do you think the ipod classic internally was unharmed? I know I'm being alittle OCD, but words rest a worried soul

[kornchild2002]

Leather really doesn't have any shock absorbance at all. Padded leather does but it would be the same as padded cloth where the padding absorbs the drop, not the actual surface cover. So no, leather is not going to be able to protect an iPod against a drop. There are cases which are more made to absorb shocks from being dropped but they are mainly made of a rubber-type material and/or thick plastic. Even then there is still the possibility of damaging an iPod classic if it is dropped.

The main issue is dropping the iPod classic at the right time. Your iPod has a small subset of buffer memory which is solid state (I think it is 64-96MB in size, I can't quite remember). So the iPod's firmware will read ahead in a playlist, album, artist list, song list, etc. and fill that buffer memory by copying information off of the hard drive. That is the only time the iPod's hard drive spins up (aside from scrolling through an iPod's content). After everything is copied to the buffer memory, the hard drive is powered down and isn't on.

Dropping an iPod classic while the hard drive is powered down has very little affect on it. In fact, you would have to drop the iPod from a very tall height while the HDD is off in order to cause internal damage to it. Dropping an iPod classic while the hard drive is spinning means almost instant death from any height as that is when the iPod is in its most exposed state. You would notice this right away though as the iPod would essentially make an internal clicking noise from the HDD and not be able to do much else.