Special laptop hard drive for aircraft use

On 6 Jun 2006 04:09:55 -0700, "Denny" wrote:

I'm a bit of an armchair astronomer so I follow the various astronomy
groups... Astronomers who work at the high altitude observatories
around the world use laptops all the time for data logging, capturing
pictures off the telescope camera, controlling the telescope, etc...
These observatories are above 10,000 feet... The astronomers have no
hard drive problems I am aware of... The OP is repeating old wives
tales without any real knowledge...

HDD crash due to density altitude is a real problem, as the heads
float above the platter on a cushion of air. Higher DA = less dense
air = easier to contact the platter.

Having said that, I have a 40G drive on my tablet PC. I regularly fly
at 11.5k in an unpressurized, and have had zero problems.

I fly my turbo mooney routinely in the mid-teens and I wasn't even
looking at tablets because of this issue - thanks for pointing it out!


--
wingslevel
Posted at www.flight.org

"Denny" wrote in message
oups.com...
[...]
These observatories are above 10,000 feet... The astronomers have no
hard drive problems I am aware of... The OP is repeating old wives
tales without any real knowledge...

Drive manufacturers often specifically state a maximum elevation for use of
their drives, because the issue *is* real.

It is true that, with a design maximum elevation of 10K, and a failure mode
that is not immediate, one can use a hard drive above 10K for some period of
time without it crashing (for example, at 10,001 feet you're unlikely to
ever have a problem). But that doesn't mean there's no issue. It just
means the issue isn't generally catastrophic.

And why would you be aware of their hard drive problems anyway? It's not
like the drive is necessarily going to fail *while* above 10K feet. It can
easily be damaged at altitude, and then not actually show signs of failure
until the computer is back at a normal altitude. Do these astronomers
report all of their technical problems, including hardware failures, to you?

Pete

I think what we need is a turbo-normalized hard drive.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

On Wed, 7 Jun 2006 12:41:46 +1000, wingslevel
wingslevel.290goz@flight_org wrote:


I fly my turbo mooney routinely in the mid-teens and I wasn't even
looking at tablets because of this issue - thanks for pointing it out!

Welcome. It certainly is not a guarantee, but I did want to point
that at least one of us has been using HDDs at reasonable altitudes
for a few years successfully.