What can I make to protect a computer?

**peterbrowne** · 07-20-2006, 09:12 PM

we're going to be mounting a desktop in a trunk, but are scared of damage from the vehicle going over bumps and stuff like that. What can I make to protect it? I was thinking of using a seagate harddrive because they have liquid mounts in the drive.

**Shadow** · 07-20-2006, 09:46 PM

Mount the drive perpendicular to the ground and you should be all good. Use a laptop drive if at all possible. You could always get one of those memory foam pillows and cut up some blocks and space them out on the case. Should help with sudden shocks (which is what kills hard drives).

**seanz0rz** · 07-20-2006, 10:20 PM

you wont have a problem with bumps, none of us do.

im running a 3.5 inch desktop drive and the roads here suck. no problems over the last year, including hitting speed bumps at 30 miles an hour and launching myself off of a railroad embankment.

**TheLandYacht** · 07-20-2006, 10:22 PM

I liked the idea of the box-inside-a-box that someone mentioned a while back. get some thick (2 or 3 inch thick) upholstery cushion...cut to fit both sides, top, and bottom.....leave back & front open. Then build a box that exactly fits the dimensions of the puter with the cushions attached (spray-adhesive works great for attachin the cushions)...insert computer/cushion combination in newly built box (leave front/back off of box)...and install box in vehicle.

**DarquePervert** · 07-20-2006, 11:08 PM

Originally Posted by Shadow

Mount the drive perpendicular to the ground and you should be all good. Use a laptop drive if at all possible. You could always get one of those memory foam pillows and cut up some blocks and space them out on the case. Should help with sudden shocks (which is what kills hard drives).

The orientation of the drive has no effect on the reliability of the drive whatsoever, good or bad. Shock-mounting anything is pointless.

Your vehicle has an extensive suspension system of trailing arms, shock absorbers, struts, springs and possibly links, panhard bars and airbags (depending on your ride). It will absorb and dampen shocks and vibrations that would do damage to the hard drive(s) and any other computer components.

The most sensitive component of a computer would be the hard drive. In order for a standard desktop drive to fail, it needs to sustain levels of shock that would be fatal to a human being.

This topic has been discussed at great length on these forums. There is no need for another thread rehashing the same stuff over and over again, so I'm closing this one.