Hard Drive Damage from Moving?

The Sudden Motion Sensor in the MBP should prevent damage under those circumstances just as it does the rest of the time the drive is operating.

The thing that's very important to avoid during that interval between waking and sleep is putting the machine into a bag or backpack. If for any reason it doesn't actually go to sleep, it could easily overheat in a closed bag.

moving it before the Mac's hard drive stops moving (the sleep indicator light starts flicking on and off) can damage the hard drive

To be safe, why not just wait for another second or two until your computer is actually sleeping? That's what I'd recommend.

F Shippey wrote:
To be safe, why not just wait for another second or two until your computer is actually sleeping? That's what I'd recommend.

The more RAM is on board, the longer it takes to go into sleep due to the Safe Sleep feature. You can wait 20-30 seconds sometimes. It can seriously be a drag.

I disabled Safe Sleep because I wanted instant sleep and don't really need the Safe Sleep feature as OS X has been extremely stable.

To be safe, why not just wait for another second or two until your computer is actually sleeping? That's what I'd recommend.

BTW, if you read your manual, you will find this is also what Apple recommends.

Is the Sudden Motion Sensor still working while the Mac goes to sleep? That would mean that when I put my MacBook to sleep, the hard drive reading arm gets parked before the Sudden Motion Sensor gets deactivated by the sleep mode.