Thinkpads Forum

Well technically is it safe for me to move my T43 around if the harddrive is spinning? (I'm worried about HEAD-CRASHs)

It should be, just don't shake the unit or anything else such as running. Just so long as you aren't blatantly abusing the unit, it should be fine.

Perfectly safe, hell you could juggle it.

Active HD protection, remember?

Regards,

James

I remember active HD protection, but I don't know if its "that" effective...
Now technically me walking with the thinkpad, and a camcorder in another hand connected to my lappy is what I was going to do.

Quick question:Whats with dell selling a 120 dollar piece of foam? Is that thing actually effective...

No clue about the foam, probably marketing. As for moving the laptop around, go ahead. It should be safe unless the drive was total crap to begin with. I've even seen my laptop drop off my desk or chair 3 or 4 feet onto my hardwood floor, twice, and both times the computer was still running just fine. Didn't even have to restart and my compy is from before the days of active protection. However, I am NOT advising that anyone should drop their computer, I take no liability for any damages.

I'm just worried about my movement causing some internal component problems...

As long as you don't run around with the machine or throw it on the floor, I think it will most likely be ok. I've owned two notebooks (a Dell Latitude CPi and this T40) and neither of them had any problem with being moved around while running.

As I posted somewhere else, my T41 fell off a coffee table to the carpeted floor whilst travelling in London in May. Machine on, running, open at 90 degrees and no damage. I DO NOT recommend this abusive treatment - it happened, and the hard drive is fine. ... JD Hurst

Don't worry, I turn it upside down and moving around the room whilst my Thinky is on.

Dude, haven't you seen the commercials?

Indeed, I'd say that _without_ the active protection system you could drop it from 1 m without necessarily breaking the drive. That's comparable to what most of my 4 laptops have suffered over the years, and they all seem to have survived.

With active protection, it could probably withstand a car crash.

I run with my Thinkpad. I put it in my Targus backpack between breaks, and I run from the office to my lunch place, all while my own thinky is on...been doing it for a year, no problems, even when I was abroad in England (ran with my laptop on), in 30'C and up, humid conditions, locked in a bag...nope, thinkpads are definitely invincible.

I'm not exactly sure you could record something while you're moving, the protection would keep the HDD parked, so no opportunity for the data to be saved into a file. And raw video will definitely fill your RAM with seconds :)

dvorak wrote:I'm not exactly sure you could record something while you're moving, the protection would keep the HDD parked, so no opportunity for the data to be saved into a file. And raw video will definitely fill your RAM with seconds

Its possible to manually turn the active protection off, or to a less sensitive setting. While this is most certainly not a good idea, it may be necessary in certain instances like the above, however there is always a risk that a head will crash into a plater while being bounced around and cause corruption of data or even a HD failure.

-kaplanfx

From my experiences, Active Protection is very sensitive. If I play music from my HTPC, over the WLAN, moving the Thinkpad while music's playing, causes an interruption in playback.