HD active protection on T400

I can't see the icon as on the older notebooks.
maybe is no more visible? or maybe should I install some dedicated driver?
I really hope protection is still present

 

anybody knows?

 

Look in the control panel for Active System Protection. There should be an option to display the icon in task bar.

Personally I don't even use it as I experienced lock ups when active system protection parked the harddrive. Well that and I ended up upgrading my HD to one that doesn't even have the sensor anyway.

 

That's precisely what the Active Protection is for. Active Protection is another sensor in your computer seperate from the hard drive that senses when to tell the hard drive to park. If your hard drive does not have a G-force sensor, this is very useful. If it does have a fall-sensor, it's safe to disable Active Protection.

But to be back on topic. Under the Notification area of the Configuration tab of the ThinkVantage Active Protection control panel, you can set whether or not there's a tray icon.

 

thanks to all.

about g-sensor integrated in hd: does it work alone or need to be driven by some installed software/driver?

 

the g-sensor that is intergrated to the HD doesn't need to have any software installed, the HD's integrated sensor works independently of any external system it is attached to. it doesnt need any extra hardware or software.

i would think that this system doesnt work as well as the one on the one with the sensor placed on the notebook. but it is better than nothing if your notebook doesnt have built-in movement sensor.

also, having both HDD w/ g-sensor and notebook movement sensor, can cause problem. im not sure if disabling the notebook's movement sensor can alleviate the problem, i would think it should, but, i dont know for sure.

 

A shock-equipped HD is unnecessary if a notebook is equipped with its own accelerometer (active protection system). Both are equally effective - you get some visual feedback and sensitivity settings with the latter, but also the overhead of having to run a small process on the machine itself.

An integrated sensor in the HD runs completely off hardware, completely independent of the system it's installed in. No need for any drivers or processes. Theoretically, it may respond slightly faster than a notebook-based sensor because it doesn't have to go through the interface, but they tend not to be quite as configurable as something like APS.

A notebook based accelerometer should be disabled if a shock-sensor equipped HD is installed. Having both go off simultaneously at best has no effect, and at worst, can interfere with each other.

 

Sure but its worthless to me if it crashing my computer when I move my laptop to a printer.

 

There is a pretty simple way to test if it's working.

Start playback of a rather large video file on the HDD. Once playback is going, lift up your laptop and shake it side to side for several seconds. If the video skips then the driver is installed and working properly. If the video plays through without interruption then the driver is most likely NOT properly installed.

Note: This only applies to conventional hard drives. The APS does not have any effect on the optical drive, flash memory cards, or PCMCIA/ExpressCard devices. Further, if an SSD is detected then APS is automatically disabled (it's unnessary as SSDs don't care about vibration). Additionally, I am not sure if APS has any effect on a secondary HDD in the UltraBay.

 

Interesting note about HD firmware having to support optional ATA idle/park commands; I didn't know there is the possibility that certain drives don't properly respond to instructions from notebook-based systems like APS. But since this functionality is becoming more common these days, I would imagine that more models support it now than before.

On the other hand, all of this is irrelevant for HDs with integrated accelerometers (such as the -G series Seagate and -J series WD drives). If a drive has a built in shock sensor, it will also by definition have all the necessary firmware to suspend activity on such a shock without any input at all from the notebook.

 

Great to know—thanks.