Shutting Down Damage?

[jeffersonkim]

Hello,

I'm setting up a carputer, where the hard drive will be powered up by my car, but it'll turn on and off according to the cigarette lighter which goes on and off with the car. . .

I read that damage will occur for my hard drive if I don't personally shut it down. Exactly how much damage will occur? Or does it really not that matter if I don't shut it down properly every time?

Thanks.

Jefferson

[Ade]

Hi,

I'd be quite concerned if you weren't shutting the system down cleanly. There are a couple of problems (that I can think of) that you might have.

1) If you don't shut it down cleanly there is a chance that not all the data in the cache will be written to the disk properly. This can cause problems next time you boot as parts of the file system could be missing. This is a general linux thing.
2) Also I had a problem even when I tried to shut it down cleanly. I didn't hold the shutdown button in long enough so I think it started rebooting when I pulled the power. Next time I rebooted it, it had lost all the settings and I had to set up the wireless and drive mappings from scratch.

Hope this helps and doesn't cause too much doom and gloom.

[jeffersonkim]

Hee hee. . . I may just forget about shutting it down until I have a problem with it. . .

In the car, all I'll be doing is reading data off the hard drive and not necessarily writing anything to it, so the cache thing may not be that much of a problem.

[DJans]

I am using my WL-HDD for a year now and always switch it off after use by plugging the power cable. I never use the "software shutdown" and I never lost data.

I am thinking about installing a WL-HDD in my car, too. In combination with a ROKU Soundbridge.

The main problem I see is that after switching the network player on the music does not continue where you leave it last time.

DJans

[jeffersonkim]

Did you think about possibly getting an Axim x51v? Or a pocket PC with wireless Internet support instead of getting that sound bridge? Then you'd be able to play movies and have GPS in the future too! not including the portability factor of the most expensive component to your "carputer!"