The technology of the time (Apollo) was more forgiving.
When Winchester drive technology was introduced, I was told that smoke particles could induce head crashes. The gap between the head and the platter was that close. No more smoking in the machine room.
Either that, or they finally understood why they were getting failures and crashes. I remember coming on to the start of my third shift week on Sunday night - all alone - and the system had crashed. A disk drive had a broken read/write head and it was "dancing" and "skipping" along the surface of the disk pack! Cold boot time! What a fun way to start a week.