"Marinize Notebook" for salt air

[larryl314]

I recently bought a Dell Inspiron for use on a boat in salt water conditions. I am concerned about a few things. One shocks to the hard drive because of boat motions. Two corrosion to boards etc due to salt water air (not spray). They sell "marinized PC" that claim to, one mount hard drives to make them shock resistent, coat boards to resist corrosion, and install a desiccant capsule.

Would it help to mount the hard drive on rubber washers? Are there spays that could be used to boards etc to resist corrosion or remove moisture? Could a desiccant capsule be installed to absorb moisture?

Thanks for the help.

 

[jschuk]

To protect the HDD, you may just have to power down the laptop when you are moving (or least when it gets choppy). You could also set the laptop to power down the HDD after a short period of time. As far as corrosion, I don't see any problem with silica gel (they are just porous glass beads), but I don't see those helping much either. You need a sealed laptop which you won't find unless it is old and slow or a Panasonic Toughbook.

 

[sharkeeper]

Movement should not present a problem for any notebook hard drive. IBM's drives can handle 200G's while operating! :Q

As far as corrosion resistance, the salt most definitely will find its way in there. There is nothing you can really do either since the computer has a fan. Even if you use dessicants to reduce the surrounding RH, you will still have salt residue.

To see the affect, you will need to look inside after a few weeks to see how much salt is in there.

Cheers!