Hard drive protection [LWN.net]

Hard drive protection

Posted Oct 28, 2005 6:44 UTC (Fri) by turpie (guest, #5219)
In reply to: Hard drive protection by njhurst
Parent article: Hard drive protection

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.

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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.