Daniel L. Lieberman wrote:

I was concerned about the 10k limit but that is 10k at 131F. Figure the
density altitude and you are ok until the point where you will require
oxygen.
Do a web search on it, high altitude causes the drive heads to crash onto
the platter. If you have ramdisc or removable media storage it shouldn't
be an issue if you can shut the harddrive down or run without one...

I discussed the matter with FUjitsu who makes my tablet. The issue is
reduced air pressure which reduces the ability of the heads to float above
the disk.
That being said some manufacturers are working to improve the drives BUT
those for my machine are rated at 10k feet at 131F and that is higher than
you can go without supplemental oxygen.

Being conservative I agree with you so I have 2 gigs of ram and can use the
Powersaving features to shut the drive and just use ram.

I wonder if anyone here has actually had a failure.

Keep in mind that pressurized cabins put you at about the same altitude.
After a year of flights with my laptop running, I ended up having to
replace the drive. This was also after many flights in GA aircraft below
10k'... I wonder if Fujitsu wants my dead drives?

The internals of a laptop easily put it above your max temp spec...