Laptops are are a wonderful thing.  They give us freedom from being tied to a desk, and nowadays they give us nearly the power of a desktop machine.  While these technical wonders are great tools to have, they do come with a downside, and I don’t mean short battery life.

The downside is, it’s a portable machine, but has a hard drive made of moving parts.  Hard drives don’t really like to be moved around while they are on.  With 1 or 2 platters spinning at 5400 revolutions per minute(RPM), and the read/write heads floating barely off the platter surface, it is an opportunity for damage and data loss.  That doesn’t even take into account the many other mechanical things that can go wrong.

Hard drive technology has come a long way.  There are now sensors in modern laptops to detect sudden motion or drops, and immediately park the drive heads to try and avoid disk damage.  While not a perfect solution, it does help.  

So how do you protect yourself from hard drive failure?  Well, it’s pretty simple.  Treat your laptop more like a desktop when you use it.  When it is on and running, try not to move it around much.   Those moving parts really don’t like shaking, turning sideways, or anything other than sitting still.  You may not think you do this, but trust me, you do and you don’t even realize it.

When you put your computer to sleep, just wait a few seconds.  On a Mac, wait several seconds after the hibernate light starts pulsating.  On a PC, wait a similar time frame after the normal lights turn off.  I know you’re always in a hurry. Let me know how that helps when your drive dies and you realize you didn’t back it up – all for the sake of speed.

When the day comes that solid state drives are standard, you can feel free to leave it on while you move. Until then, be smart.