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Safe to move a laptop while its asleep?

  • Yes - both walking & gentle biking

    Votes: 27 93.1%
  • Yes, but only for walking

    Votes: 2 6.9%
  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    29

Epsilon88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 26, 2009
327
0
I have a 15" pre-unibody Macbook Pro and a 12" Powerbook G4. When the computer is asleep, is it safe to move around with it, or could that damage the hard drive? It would be moved on its side in a laptop bag - both walking and biking. I'm so tired of turning it on and off any time I move. Thanks!
 
Ditto to all of the above. I never turn my MBP off. When I'm moving around it's in my bag sleeping soundly.
 
Yep, only the RAM is powered during sleep and the sleep indicator light and the battery indicator lights, but no moving parts, the HDD and ODD, are powered during sleep.

MRoogle is a good tool to search these fora for already existing threads about questions you have. It might be able to answer you quicker than waiting for an answer.
 
When you first close the lid to put it to sleep, is it important to wait for the sleep light to start flashing before moving it?
 
When you first close the lid to put it to sleep, is it important to wait for the sleep light to start flashing before moving it?
Yes. Until the light starts flashing, it's still saving things to the HD and preparing to sleep. Let it finish before moving it.
you dont need to wait laps are meant to be mobile.
Yes, you do need to wait:

Apple Portables: Wait for pulsing sleep indicator light before moving system
When putting your Apple portable computer into sleep mode, be sure to wait a few seconds until the sleep indicator light starts pulsing before moving your Apple portable computer. The pulsing light indicates that the computer is fully asleep and the hard disk has stopped spinning.
 
Only thing I'd be worried about is having a disc in the cd-rom drive. Those things can screw up way too easily.

How? The ODD is powered off during sleep and will not spin the medium inside. I transported my iBook, MacBook and MacBook Pros quite often with a CD or DVD inside the ODD and it did no harm.
 
How? The ODD is powered off during sleep and will not spin the medium inside. I transported my iBook, MacBook and MacBook Pros quite often with a CD or DVD inside the ODD and it did no harm.

That's good to know in case you ever forget a disc in there. Some DVD players don't "grab" the disc and rely on gravity instead. Move it upside down and bam, now you gotta grab the screwdriver.
 
That's good to know in case you ever forget a disc in there. Some DVD players don't "grab" the disc and rely on gravity instead. Move it upside down and bam, now you gotta grab the screwdriver.

I did not have to do that, it seems the holding mechanism of those drives does not disengage while a disk is inside the drive during sleep. I got stuck disk though, but that was due to the OS not letting go of it and normally a restart or Disk Utility would fix that.
 
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