Transporting

Is it safe to carry the laptop from room to room with lid open and machine turned on? Or should I shut it down before transporting. I'm getting an error about needing to re-seat the hard drive and I am wondering if I have mishandled it over the years.

 

If you have a mechanical drive and not a SSD it is a good idea not only to close the lid but to actually shut down the computer completely before moving it around. Laptops are over engineered to resist some mild movement though so what were you doing exactly with it? Even the old school desktop hard drives had some resistance and continued to work if you carried them around while the power was on. Were you shaking the thing or something? Maybe what you had was a faulty drive that was going to fail anyway.

So no, you should be ok moving a laptop from room to room while on (the lid position makes no difference), but for longer transportation you should turn it off.

 

I agree with @fcuco that why not close your laptop before transporting it? But in fairness to you, if the distance is just in the next room, I would probably be doing the same. I'm not saying you are careful but when I move my laptop that is open, I am very careful with my steps. What's not good is to move the laptop (or any computer for that matter) when it is accessing the hard disk. Unless you have an SSD which have no moving part, that movement may affect the hard disk.

 

If you are being careful or just inside your house, then I don't see any problem! However, if you are to transport it outside the home and on the road then safety first always. Shut it down, close the lid, and put it in protective case!

 

Why can't you just close the lid on your laptop if you're moving to a different room? It takes like a second to do it, and there will be less chance of it being damaged if you ever bump it on a counter or something. It's just as simple as closing the top, holding it on your side, and you're done! Why are you overcomplicating things? Haha, but to be serious, I don't think there's a problem, unless you bump the screen onto one of the furniture, if it's only for a quick time, I don't think you won't have a problem.