Special laptop hard drive for aircraft use

[[email protected]]

http://www.dvnation.com/ssd.html has SSDs now! A solid state drive is
like a hard drive, but it is pure flash memory. This means NO altitute
problems. If you take your laptop flying with you, the hard drive will
crash at about 6000 or 7000 feet due to lack of air pressure. A solid
state drive will not. Since it is pure flash memory, it completely
SILENT, IMMUNNE TO VIBRATION, withstands over 1000Gs of operation
shock, and requres no ventilation. Basic models are speced to operate
in a temperature range of 0 - 70 C (32F to 158F). Various size and
speeds are available as drop-in replacements to any laptop, tablet, or
desktop computer. From 8GB to 128GB in capacity. IDE and SATA. As
low as $599. I put the 16GB SSD in my Aopen Pandora miniPC and will
put one in my next laptop computer.

[Stubby]

What is the bit transfer rate to the flash drive? Most flash memory is
fairly slow and not suitable to execute programs.

Has anyone actually had "altitude problems" with standard disks? In 10
years of being a road warrior, I never did. My understanding is that
modern disks have the heads riding in contact with the surface.


wrote:
> http://www.dvnation.com/ssd.html has SSDs now! A solid state drive is
> like a hard drive, but it is pure flash memory. This means NO altitute
> problems. If you take your laptop flying with you, the hard drive will
> crash at about 6000 or 7000 feet due to lack of air pressure. A solid
> state drive will not. Since it is pure flash memory, it completely
> SILENT, IMMUNNE TO VIBRATION, withstands over 1000Gs of operation
> shock, and requres no ventilation. Basic models are speced to operate
> in a temperature range of 0 - 70 C (32F to 158F). Various size and
> speeds are available as drop-in replacements to any laptop, tablet, or
> desktop computer. From 8GB to 128GB in capacity. IDE and SATA. As
> low as $599. I put the 16GB SSD in my Aopen Pandora miniPC and will
> put one in my next laptop computer.
>

[Dylan Smith]

On 2006-06-05, Stubby > wrote:
> Has anyone actually had "altitude problems" with standard disks? In 10
> years of being a road warrior, I never did. My understanding is that
> modern disks have the heads riding in contact with the surface.

Modern disk heads still fly and are not in contact with the disk
surface. However, I've not experienced problems at cabin altitudes of
11,500 feet. Hard disks are absolutely fine in an airliner cabin which
is generally pressurised to a cabin altitude of 5000-7000 feet.

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

[Peter Duniho]

"Stubby" > wrote in message
. ..
> What is the bit transfer rate to the flash drive? Most flash memory is
> fairly slow and not suitable to execute programs.

Flash drives can be faster than your usual flash RAM, but they are still
slow, yes (and some of the ones being advertised on that page are slower
than a regular thumb drive). Does that make them "not suitable to execute
programs"? Hardly. Plenty of people run programs right off their thumb
drives, on the 480Mb/s USB interface (or 12Mb/s if they are stuck with USB
1.0).

> Has anyone actually had "altitude problems" with standard disks? In 10
> years of being a road warrior, I never did.

Define "road warrior". Conventional vented hard drives should be fine up to
10,000', which is above the altitudes one would typically see on a
commercial flight. Were you using your hard drive in an unpressurized
airplane above 10,000'?

Is immediate failure of a hard drive used above 10,000' guaranteed? No, not
at all. But it does shorten the lifetime of the drive. If done often
enough, at high enough altitudes, the failure of the drive is likely to
occur quite quickly.

> My understanding is that modern disks have the heads riding in contact
> with the surface.

Your understanding is incorrect.

That said, the original post reads every bit like spam, and I wouldn't be
surprised to find some connection between the poster and the web site. And
those prices? You'd have to REALLY want to use your computer above 10,000'
to shell out the bucks they want. You'd get better performance and save
money just by making sure your drive is backed up (for convenience), storing
your user data on a thumb drive (to make doubly ensure you don't lose
important data), and just replacing your drive every time it fails due to
high-altitude operation.

You can buy a lot of conventional hard drives for the couple grand they want
for anything that matches the performance of a USB 2.0 thumb drive. Even
their least-expensive drive is still $600, and it's a paltry 16GB with a
downright anemic transfer rate of 8.5MB/s. Ick. Why bother? For that
price, you can buy a dozen low-end 40GB conventional hard drives that vastly
outperform the flash drive. With the standard three-year warranty, you
might even get your replacements free (technically, high-altitude operation
ought to invalidate the warranty, but I doubt the drive manufacturer would
bother to look beyond whether there's any obvious signs of abuse).

Pete

[Stubby]

Peter Duniho wrote:
> "Stubby" > wrote in message
> . ..

>> My understanding is that modern disks have the heads riding in contact
>> with the surface.
>
> Your understanding is incorrect.
>
Why is there no defined "Landing Zone" on the current crop of drives?

[Peter Duniho]

"Stubby" > wrote in message
. ..
>>> My understanding is that modern disks have the heads riding in contact
>>> with the surface.
>>
>> Your understanding is incorrect.
>>
> Why is there no defined "Landing Zone" on the current crop of drives?

Non-sequitur.

First, why would you think that "there is no defined 'Landing Zone' on the
current crop of drives"? Second, in what way does the presence or lack
thereof of a "Landing Zone" have to do with whether the heads contact the
surface during normal operation?

The landing zone is a place where the heads can rest when they are not being
used to read or write data from or to the disk platters, and of course to
"park" the heads when the drive is shut down. It has nothing to do with how
the heads are supported when actually accessing the data on the platters.

Pete

[Stubby]

There is no way to park a drive that has heads riding on the surface.
That's been the way nearly all disk drives work since the mid-1980s. I
believe the technology was invented by IBM in their San Jose disk facility.




Peter Duniho wrote:
> "Stubby" > wrote in message
> . ..
>>>> My understanding is that modern disks have the heads riding in contact
>>>> with the surface.
>>> Your understanding is incorrect.
>>>
>> Why is there no defined "Landing Zone" on the current crop of drives?
>
> Non-sequitur.
>
> First, why would you think that "there is no defined 'Landing Zone' on the
> current crop of drives"? Second, in what way does the presence or lack
> thereof of a "Landing Zone" have to do with whether the heads contact the
> surface during normal operation?
>
> The landing zone is a place where the heads can rest when they are not being
> used to read or write data from or to the disk platters, and of course to
> "park" the heads when the drive is shut down. It has nothing to do with how
> the heads are supported when actually accessing the data on the platters.
>
> Pete
>
>

[Peter Duniho]

"Stubby" > wrote in message
. ..
> There is no way to park a drive that has heads riding on the surface.

Modern drives don't have heads riding on the surface. They all "fly" above
the surface, on a very thin cushion of air. That's the reason that
high-altitude operation is a problem.

Are you saying that you have a reference that says there is no defined
landing zone on the current crop of drives, and thus you infer that because
of that, the head are in contact with the platters?

I'm really having a hard time trying to figure out what your point is. You
don't appear to understand how modern drives work, but at the same time all
of your posts are so brief, and so seemingly irrelevant to the topic at
hand, it''s difficult to understand what it is you are actually trying to
say.

Pete

[Dylan Smith]

On 2006-06-05, Stubby > wrote:
> There is no way to park a drive that has heads riding on the surface.
> That's been the way nearly all disk drives work since the mid-1980s. I
> believe the technology was invented by IBM in their San Jose disk facility.

Modern drives are voice-coil actuated and do not need to be "parked" or
"landed". When the power to the voice coil goes away, the head retracts
*completely off the disk surface* into small plastic storage grooves
just off the outer edge of the disk. There may be slight design
differences - but if you take the lid off a hard drive that's what
you'll see (obviously, don't take the lid off a hard drive you want to
keep using).

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

[Denny]

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...

denny

[Nathan Young]

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.

[wingslevel]

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

[Peter Duniho]

"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

[Brien K. Meehan]

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

Yeah, that's the ticket.

[Nathan Young]

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.