Active Protection System

My Z60m hasn't failed to activate the active protection system and I'm glad. However, how effective is this "active protection system"? I usually get mild shocks since I set the APS at the highest sensitivity.

Is there a way to have a bigger APS alert as well and not just that tiny icon at the right side of the task bar (notification area?).

 

Any particular reason you want a bigger alert? I'd think that if you have it on max, it's going to be pretty sensitive and if you get a pop-up every time that it stops the HD, that would get pretty darn annoying.

 

Ok, I'm no expert so correct me if I'm wrong. But isn't APS mainly used to prevent falls?

I can't see how a sensor would pick up a bump, report this to the harddrive and let the harddrive-head park itself - before - the head would crash into the disc. Especially not since the head 'floats' eeeeextremely close to the disc.

So that makes me believe that the APS system is there to be able to sense when the notebook might encounter a bigger bump. Such as a fall or something like that.

Notebookdrives do not have a problem with you tilting the notebook or something like that (which APS still stoppes the harddrive for, of course hard for it to know whether the tilt is intentional or not) but that means that an APS warning isn't an indicator of any sort that the harddrive would have taken a beating if it wasn't there so it's not that useful to be warned about it. The only reason for the icon to be there (my opionion) is so that you know when the harddrive is protected. And the reason for why you would want that is when you are doing something and it suddenly just stops just because it waits for the harddrive - without that icon you wouldn't know if it had crashed or what it is doing.
I think that is the only reason for the icon to be there.

Sorry for not answering your question directly but I don't feel theres a need for any larger notification.
If something freezes, have a look at the notification area, is the harddrive stopped you know why, if it isn't it's something else. Not much more to it (if I haven't missed anything).

 

The best thing is to make sure you have a backup of everything you cannot afford to lose. Hard drives are easily replaced.