'nother computer question

[terryandrene]

I lost my harddrive last week and the consensus of the Indian Dell Tech and a somewhat savvy friend was that I toasted it while charging its battery with my van's electrical system. I'm using a 375 watt inverter in a power port on the dash. I have no idea if the inverter has any power surge quelling capability.

Is it a common practice to charge a laptop this way? Do I need to add a surge protection device and, if so, what specifically should I be using?

 

[LDB]

I believe Belkin makes a single outlet surge suppressor that might be suitable for your need. I've seen them at CompUSA and think the brand name was Belkin but the store people should be able to direct you to the right thing.

Leo Bricker, 73's K5LDB, OOIDA Life Member 677319
Owner, Panther trucks 5508, 5509, 5641
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Support the entire Constitution, not just the parts you like.

 

[redytrk]

I feel for you Terry...Just went through the lost Hardrive thing my self.We think vibration was the culpret. I set the Dell on the floor while moving 10 miles to a different TS. When I picked it up,there was the Blue Screen of Death.Do you plan to re-install yourself? If so here some things to avoid.

#1 Don`t use your cell phone minutes.Ohe call was 45 Min. The other calls were on landline,and excessive. be sure to get the Tech name and case #. They play a game of returning your call,and expect you to sit by he phone for 24 hours.

#2 Be sure they send all the disk you need to re-install.They will then walk you through the process. Don`t be like me,and plunge right into the re-install. Aparently I missed something,and a whole lot of drivers I needed was missing.

If you do wind up with a driver issue ,I would recomend Driver Dective which identified and re-installed 6 drivers.
http://www.drivershq.com/

My next computer will definatly be a Mac.There are stores,(closest to me is Indianapolis). Next time I want to just plunk it down on the counter and let them take care of it.

GOOD LUCK!!!

 

[Moot]

Terry, did you start the van's engine while the computer was charging?
I usually plug my inverter into my auxilliary battery system.

 

[terryandrene]

Yes Moot. In retrospect, I think I started the van while charging and therein lay my dilemma. I use a continuous duty solenoid as an aux batt isolator and it closes when ignition switch is on so any spike would affect the charge either way.

Redy: I was very pleased with the Dell support. It was prompt and understandable and Hector the technician helped this cybertard through the diagnosis quickly and easily. I received a gratis Drive by DHL three days later and it had all XP Pro, SP2 installed along with the drivers and utilities. I'm going to keep drivershq.com handy just in case

Thanks to each of you for the advice and comments.

 

[jaminjim]

The only thing bad about an Apple is they can't run Street Atlas.

If not for that I would have one in a minute.

 

[RLENT]

> The only thing bad about an Apple is they can't run Street
>Atlas. If not for that I would have one in a minute.

Aren't the MacBook Pro's dual boot (Windows and OSX ?)

 

[jaminjim]

I don't know about computers enough to answer that question, But I do have two matching boots in the truck

 

[greg334]

Terry,
I find it highly improbable that starting the van would cause the hard drive to take a vacation, the inverter should not have given any spike unless it is a cheap one made in some far-a-way land where they still don’t have running water.

The inverter should handle the fluctuation or DC spikes without hesitation and there are more things on the laptop which will become toast before the drive.

I would say that it just went, nothing else. Seen new drives last only hours and seen older ones keep going on and on. It is just something of luck.

As for apple fixing things, yea you'll drop it off but they may find an excuse to say it is out of warentee.

 

[Cattaur]

>> The only thing bad about an Apple is they can't run Street
>>Atlas. If not for that I would have one in a minute.
>
>Aren't the MacBook Pro's dual boot (Windows and OSX ?)

Yeah, but not just the MacBook Pro's. All of the Macs that have Intel processors will be able to dual boot, using Boot Camp.
Plus, there is a program (Paralells, I beleive is the name) that basically runs Windows as a process within Mac OSX.

Not sure on how good this is, as I still have an iBook, with the G4 PPC.

 

[JnJTeam]

All of our vehicles laptops are charging from a 300 watt inverter. Mine is a cheapie from Tractor Supply. Same computer and inverter for 2.5yrs now and no problems. Hard drive failure can occur from a number of reasons. Dell is quick to always diagnose a failure that is user caused. The likely culprit of the failure is hard drive vibration. On a 375 watt inverter a power surge that might have caused a failure would have tripped the inverter first. All inverters have some type of fuse either internally or externally replaceable. Most computers can take a spike that would trip smaller inverters (100-500watts) and not cause any damage. If the inverter did not trip I highly doubt it was a power spike.


As a side note a redneck fix for vibration problems is to buy a large gel heat/cold pack and affix it to the bottom of the laptop. It dampens alot of the road vibration. I have one under my laptop.

 

[ozoner]

I doubt that charging the laptop battery caused the problem. There are filters and isolation transformers in the dc adapter that powers the laptop. There are also filters in the laptop power control circuits themselves, and the hard drive has some very basic voltage filtering. It was probably just "time" for it to fail. Over the last several years, I've seen a rise in hard drive failures on laptops, and a slower but noticable increase in failures in desktop hard drives. I believe the cause is cost cutting in the drive manufacturing facility. They try to make them as cheap as possible and the quality just isn't there any more. Several years ago, the standard warranty on a drive was 5 years. Now 1 year is a more common warranty period. The system providers usually provide a 3 year warranty though for an added cost. The highest failure rates I've seen recently are from Travelstar or Hitachi drives.

Always be prepared for failures and regularly back up your critical data to an external storage device.