I was brought up to believe that a machine shouldn't be moved while working (all this business about a steady footing, no wobbly tables), and especially when the disk was working. (Are we talking about HDI here). Yet I see folks everywhere, buses, trains, using their machines.

Are they potentially damaging the HDD, or have things moved on?

Pete

Mush the same applies today as it did in the past.
You should not move a system while the drive is working. ( Read / Write) operation
The name implies Laptop the LAP is the essential part of the name. The persons lap is supposed to absorb the shock of movement.
The new drives will withstand a lot more than the old ones did.
But only within reason.

If you use it on an air plain and the unit is shaking from turbulence
Then you are risking possible drive damage.
Check the price of a replacement drive for a laptop and think about it when or If you use it while moving ..

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To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !

Hi Rick,

I wasn't intending to use my machine in a moving situation, I was just marvelling at the folk who do. And wondering if laptop hard drives were made more shock resistant than desktop ones.

Pete

The read head on a hard drive is ridiculous close to the drive surface itself, but doesn't actually touch, as with a floppy. A jarring movement can bump the read mechanism against the disk surface and damage it. Yes, the hard drive in a laptop is more sturdy and durable, which is one reason laptops are so much more expensive than desktops. The same applies to external hard drives (the get moved a lot) and other peripherals.

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Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to use the net, and he wont bother you for weeks.

Thanks yawningdog, thought that they were just slightly tougher was the case.

I realise that the heads are extraordinarily close to the disk surface (hence my question) in a HDD, but am now not sure of the situation in a floppy. Do they actually touch the disk?

Pete

A point that was stated may not have been quite clear: the limit on what a hard drive can take while the disk is spinning and heads are not parked is set by the balance between aerodynamic forces that keep the heads off the disk surface (they actually do *fly*) and forces of acceleration due to shock. If a laptop is on something soft like a lap then it's darn hard to accelerate it fast enough to cause a head crash -- at least not without doing an amazing job on important components of your lap. OTOH, dropping the machine a couple of inches onto a hard table may well be all that's needed, depending the stiffness of the structure and the feet.

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Walt
Proving daily that the Peter Principle applies even to acolyte geeks ...