Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

walking drives
     
        An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the
        days when they were huge, clunky {washing machines}.  Those
        old {dinosaur} parts carried terrific angular momentum; the
        combination of a misaligned spindle or worn bearings and
        stick-slip interactions with the floor could cause them to
        "walk" across a room, lurching alternate corners forward a
        couple of millimeters at a time.  There is a legend about a
        drive that walked over to the only door to the computer room
        and jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in
        order to get at it!  Walking could also be induced by certain
        patterns of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width
        of the disk, followed by a slow seek in the other direction).
        Some bands of old-time hackers figured out how to induce
        disk-accessing patterns that would do this to particular drive
        models and held disk-drive races.
     
        [{Jargon File}]