Carputer Damage from Subwoofer?

**Mystic_Shinobi** · 08-21-2007, 02:30 AM

I've been searching the forums but I can't seem to find a thread discussing this. I'm in the process of planning out and building a carputer for a Nissan 240sx I'll be receiving in a few months. I planned on having the carputer in the trunk along with the sub and amp/s. The sub is going to be a 15". I planed on having the whole trunk custom fiberglassed with spots to mount the amp and carputer next to it. Will the vibrations from the sub damage the carputer with it being so close to it, or should it be ok? Do I need to add any kind of vibration damper and if so what would work best? Sorry if this subject has discussed before, I tried seaching different strings but couldn't find the answer I was looking for. If the the placement of the carputer isn't idea, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. TIA

**DarquePervert** · 08-21-2007, 08:02 AM

You're not searching very hard (or very smart), then.
This is something that has been brought up and discussed at length many times over.

Sub vibrations could damage a hard drive, certainly. As far as the solid state hardware (motherboard, etc.), I'd be concerned only about components coming loose, which isn't a good thing, but not the end of the world, typically.

**pancit175** · 08-22-2007, 04:40 PM

And I believe that there are some hard drives (other than solid state) that are advertized as extreme enviroment, where it can take more cold, heat, and vibration than the average hard drive.

**Megalomaniac** · 08-22-2007, 07:25 PM

as long as you mount the HDD nothing should happen. people with 150+db substages have never encountered problems. heck i've seen a 161db spl van with a carputer that took the abuse like a champ...although it was just a burp

**Mystic_Shinobi** · 08-23-2007, 01:19 AM

k, thx for the info, like i said, i searched but apparently not the right strings. sorry for another thread that's been discussed already.

**mgithens** · 08-24-2007, 03:14 PM

keep the HD as far from the sub as possible... I kept getting the master boot record corrupted on various hard drives when the sub was less than 1 foot away... this was a 200watt sub, small magnet and moderate volumes... seemed to blitz on road trips...

**DarquePervert** · 08-24-2007, 03:33 PM

Originally Posted by mgithens

keep the HD as far from the sub as possible... I kept getting the master boot record corrupted on various hard drives when the sub was less than 1 foot away... this was a 200watt sub, small magnet and moderate volumes... seemed to blitz on road trips...

That might be a bit alarmist....

I think that keeping the HDD a reasonably safe distance from the sub is certainly a good idea...

**paragraph** · 08-26-2007, 09:55 AM

First off, a sub magnet isn't going to produce enough of a field to wreck a hard drive, because of the manner they are made hard disks are Faraday cages, so it would take some crazy amount of magnatism to wreck a hard drive.

Vibrations however are more likely to cause a problem.

When you mount the hard drive i'd try and use a hard drive cage with vibration dampning (eg: the kind that come with thermaltake cases, they are just little rubber gromits that allow the hard disk to transfer shock onto them.) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...sunami%2bdream check some of those pictures, i'm sure you can rig something like that up with what you have.

It should also be said that 2.5 and 1.8 inch drives are much more resistant to vibration than a 3.5in drive since they are designed for mobile applications.

the worst that can happen is you lose the hard disk. So i'd ghost an image before it leaves the bench and if it does happen to die you have a copy of it for the next hard drive.

**mgithens** · 08-26-2007, 03:04 PM

I agree that a subwoofer's magnet isn't going to cause a problem, the fixed magnet is a steady state solid magnet and that would have little affect, BUT... I totally am 100% aware that the electromagnetic forces that cause the speaker to move are plenty adequate to affect a hard drive...

I am not speaking about a theory, I am 100% positive that my setup corrupted the master boot record. I used two different hard drives and had the same problem. The corruption occurred on long road trips - without fail!! So every weekend we would set out for skiing and about 1/2 the way there, the computer would start to act up - I would attempt a reboot and it would fail. I switched cables, power supplies, motherboards and ram. I tried a maxtor and a wd drive - same results. I moved the sub and it hasn't happened a single time - and I am still using one of the same hard drives!!

so paragraph, I'm not trying to be rude. I am just forewarning based on my experience... I will say this thought -- why risk it?? Put three feet between a sub and a hard drive versus boxing them all up... i have had plenty of success with that much space.