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Hard drive protection

Hard drive protection

Posted Oct 16, 2005 23:48 UTC (Sun) by njhurst (guest, #6022)
Parent article: Hard drive protection

It seems to me that parking the heads when extra accelleration is detected is a bit too late. Wouldn't it be better to park the heads if more than x seconds of near 0G occurs? The x corresponds to the amount time required for the laptop to fall a dangerous distance - about 0.3s for a 0.5m fall by my calculations; minus the time to park the heads (hopefully a lot less than 0.3 seconds).


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Hard drive protection

Posted Oct 28, 2005 6:44 UTC (Fri) by turpie (guest, #5219) [Link]

Not quite.
When the laptop is on your lap it would be at 1G. When you drop it it would accellerate as it fell to the ground. It would be accellerating before it reached 0G.

Hard drive protection

Posted Jan 4, 2006 8:40 UTC (Wed) by thedave (guest, #34932) [Link]

I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there.

While the laptop is on your lap, its accelerometer will be sensing an acceleration of 1G up (away from Earth).

The moment the support of your lap is removed, its new acceleration will be 0G + (air resistance away from Earth) ~= 0G, as air resistance is inconsequential at low speeds.

But, for all intents and purposes the measured acceleration while falling will be zero, until it encounters something to change it.

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