Path: utzoo!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!fluke!alz
From: alz@tc.fluke.COM (Al Weiss)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Laptop harddisk
Message-ID: <7800@fluke.COM>
Date: 18 Apr 89 18:35:57 GMT
References: <9994@netnews.upenn.edu>
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Distribution: usa
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
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In article <9994@netnews.upenn.edu> harnyo@eniac.seas.upenn.edu writes:
>Is it dangerous to shake the laptop while you
>are accessing the harddisk? Also, while carrying it, wouldn't it
>cause the harddisk head to hit the disk surface ? . . .
>my common sense tells me that it may be dangerous for the harddisk.

The hard drives for laptops "generally" are going to be a bit more rugged
during operation, but there certainly are limits.  You aren't going to see me
purposefully shaking it. That just adds to the possibility of something bad
happening. The other item is that they should all have is some type of head
locking (hopefully automatic) while powered down to make them able to
withstand being carried around with much less chance for the heads banging
into good media or damaging the heads themselves.  

Another less thought about situation that Conner Peripherals just warned me
about (but is probably valid for other drives also) is during the power down
sequence the heads are much more suseptable to a crash.  During the five-or-so
seconds that it takes to stop rotating and have the heads lock into place,
there is less air movement to hold the heads off of the media.  So when you
kill the power, be REAL careful for about 5 seconds.  After that it'll take
75G's of shock to do anything.

My 2 cents worth,
Al