The reliability and stability of hard disk drives (HDDs) are especially important as the areal recording density is rapidly increasing and target to 10 Tb/in 2 in the future. The vibrations of the head gimbals assembly (HGA) are inevitable by internal fluid flow and external shock impulses. In this paper, a 3-D finite-element model of an HDD is developed. The internal flow-induced HGA vibrations are investigated by a fluid-structure interaction approach. The external shock-induced vibrations of HGA are also analyzed. The investigated filling gases in the HDD include air and helium.Index Terms-Flow-induced vibration, fluid-structure interaction (FSI), helium-filled drive, shock response.