On Apr 8, 10:30*am, Jim White wrote:
I doubt it Noel. The heads do ride on air but for sterility reasons in a
sealed air capsule which was sealed in a clean room. The most likely
problem is that the air tight capsule which is sealed with a sticky label
will be compromised. This will ultimately lead to contamination and disk
failure. The smallest mite of dust etc will cause a head crash.

Jim

At 08:02 08 April 2009, noel.wade wrote:

Just a quick FYI:

Hard-drive based Camcorders are a bad idea, as most of them are not
qualified for use above 10,000' MSL (thanks to Kempton Izuno for
pointing this out and saving me some $$)... *The problem is the
cushion of air that the hard drive read/write heads float on, above/
beside the platters... as air density goes down these things become
more susceptible to striking the spinning hard drive platters - not a
good thing!

--Noel



Nope. That is a common misunderstanding. Most hard drive units are not
sealed and are vented via a very fine filter. The reduction in air
density and head flight height is the reason those hard drives have an
altitude limit. Some people with hard disk drive based iPods trying to
use them in gliders found out the hard way. While you might get lucky
for a long time I would worry about the vendor's max altitude specs.
Some specialist drives are pressure sealed, not likely the ones you'll
find in consumer equipment.

Darryl