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As non-traditional applications of hard disk drives (HDDs) emerge, the interest in the effects of shock and vibration on small form factor (SFF) drives has come into currency due to the increasingly hostile environments encountered in the usage of the portable computer as well as the application in consumer devices. In this paper, the dynamic characteristics of an SFF drive were investigated using both experimental and numerical techniques, including modal analysis and damping measurement of the head arm assembly (HAA) of the drive. A finite element (FE) model of the HAA was created to perform numerical analysis. The FE model was verified and modified according to numerical results and experimental results. It is found that numerical results of the HAA in it free state and those in its preloading state coincide well with those of experiments, and/or those by other researchers.