ipod - good to 10k feet (spec)

monkgonemad

sometimes this topic comes up (i had wondered) and i think one of the 'hippies' also stated it was 10k - but i have looked it up in the specs.

obviously this is not due to electronics but the hard drive.

having said that, i had my creative zen rockin' over tanglangla pass w/ no averse effects.

i should have copied it out along with the temperature specs, but it wasnt on my mind to post it all here.

crvlvr

if I remember correctly, wasn't this posted years ago?

Maheswara_shishya

I see no harm in revisiting topics, especially when they get burried in the back of the vaults.

I'm curious as to why height would cause them to falter? Is it electormagnetic disturbances at higher altitudes that does it?

Shiver me Timbers

Here's the original thread.......

vistet

I met three shell shocked owners of jammed portable hard drives ,with all their photos on them , last time around in Ladakh & Tibet. They had all broken down somewhere well over 4000. In one of the cases I know, since we rode in the same jeep, that it hadn´t been operated but arrived at 3900 jammed.

I stored mine in a airtight box, and never used it above 4000. Worked for me.

If you look it up on the TT , you´ll also find some recent posts about the same thing from the Tibet train, which kind of debunks the theory that it´s just a combination of kidney-belt roads and sloppy owners.

Interestingly enough , the specs for shuffle & nano (i.e. flash memory-based players) also say 3000 meters ( and down to -20 ) , but there shouldn´t be any difference between them and any other electronic equipment.

crvlvr

Shuffle and nano do not have hard drives, so that should not be the issue.

Also, I've seen video of people using laptops on everest base camp, which is around 6000mts. I wonder why their hard drives have not crashed.

vistet

Well, that was my point : "i.e. flash memory-based players". And illogical , as seen from this this : flash memory continues to run at all altitudes.

As for Kala Pattar (5545 meters ) , I´ve seen similar pictures , you also have the experience of member lightning mentioned in the other thread. But at that altitude you have exceeded the storage limits of the lappie :

And at least small drives seems to have a craptacular performance at high altitude.

They could be using sealed drives : supposed to be warm and expensive, never seen any myself.

They could be using a flash to ide-adapter , with this you can fit up to four flash cards within a standard drive case , giving you up to 64 gigs (or more , hard to keep up nowadays). For a price .

They could be using Toshibas all solid state memory lappie.

Or they could just hope for the best , doing frequent backups. The blissfully ignorant, soon to be pissed off, like in the Washington Post article, climbers should be a dying breed by now.

Yogesh Sarkar

I guess normal hdd can work above 10k feet, if that wasnt the case there will be no cybercafes in leh and tanksey

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