Thinkpads Forum

I notice that the new Seagate 7200.2 160 GB drive (ST9160823AS) has a shock detection feature: "Seagate incorporates freefall sensor technology, which is designed to prevent drive damage in the event of a drop or other shock. The feature is called G-Force Protection, and it puts the drive into a non-operating state by moving the read/write heads off the medium and locking them when the system senses that it is in free fall."

Now, we all know that the Lenovo's already have this implemented by using an external sensor and software. Also from the review: "You can already find freefall sensor solutions in retail products such as Lenovo Thinkpad notebooks; in that particular case, the sensor is built into the notebook. Moving it into the hard drive removes the necessity to run a service that orders the hard drive to park its heads in case of a drop."

Does anyone know of any issues, conflcts, etc between the drive and the "external" solution?

I'm thinking of buying this drive and want to avoid issues.

Here's a link to the article I'm reading: http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/04/23/ ... page3.html

I have the same drive in my T60p. With this drive, you DO NOT need to have the Thinkvantage Active Protection System (APS) installed, because the drive itself has the sensors and the ability to park itself when it detects motion.

I tested this by running Vista and playing a video. When I simulate dropping my Thinkpad, the video stops. When I put the Thinkpad down and make it stable, the video resumes. It works!

Awesome! Drive ordered!

One less thinkvantage piece of software to worry about!

I was going to say to buy the mentioned drive only if you're planning to put it in the Ultrabay in future.

APS, the integrated motion sensor (gyro-accelerometer) will always be there in your thinkpad to protect your primary HDD, why pay more (if you're) when you already have one great technology available.

That's an interesting point ryengineer made about putting the new drive in the Ultrabay. It leads me to wonder about a couple of things:
1. Is a drive in the Ultrabay not protected by the IBM/Lenovo APS system? I gather so from ryengineer's comment.
2. If you put one of the Seagate drives with the "freefall sensor technology" in the main drive bay and leave the APS system activated would there be a conflict?

I did a little checking around and apparently the "G-Force Protection™—Seagate® freefall sensor technology" is designated by the "G" at the end of the ST9200420ASG serial number of the 200GB drive. (See http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datashe ... 7200_2.pdf)

For anyone not wanting this function, the non-G-Force protected drive is a few dollars cheaper. Non-G-Force drive is $198.87, G-Force drive is $204.41 at Cost Central. If you're a bargain hunter like some of us, you might pay close attention to the serial number on any new Seagate drive purchases.

It would be helpful if those with experience with a drive with the "G-Force Protection" in a Thinkpad using the APS technology could weigh in.

Regarding the 'on drive' seagate g-force protection vs. the 'on chasis' APS system, I can imagine benefits to both. Having the sensor 'on drive' could lead to much faster response to 'events' (motion), but also, having a software solution (APS) could offer a richer set of features (pure conjecture).

Here's my one and only real issue - I have set my APS to be as senstive as possible, and disabled that setting about 'Adaptively Ignoring repetitive shocks' or whatever. I believe that treating a hard drive well is a good investment. So I wonder if the 'on disk' version is going to be as senstive. Currently, my drive pauses when I move the laptop in all but the most gengle movements, and I'd like the on-disk version to do likewise.

I'd actually like to consider running both ... we'll see.

In terms of cost, drive bay usage, etc ...

This purchase got started when I was at my local Fry's Electronics and saw a 160 GB / 7200 Fujitsu drive for $199, and almost bought it since I'm running out of space on my $100 GB system drive. I decided to come home and research first.

There I learned of the Seagate, Hitachi, and Toshiba flavors of the 160 GB/7200 drives. I then googled and froogled these drives, and the Seagate was actually the cheapest at about $150 from ZipZoomFly. So that's the one I bought.

The built-in shock protection was an added bonus.

To answer the question about APS and drive bay, I believe the other posters are correct - the APS system only protects the main system drive, not a drive bay drive.

For me, the drive bay is not pracitcal as a second hard drive location - even though I've bought the drive caddy already. Every time I start relying on the second hard drive, I find I need to access a CD/DVD for some reason.

Yes, APS only protects the primary HDD. The accelerometer is installed in the thinkpad and not on the drive.

Good old IBM wrote:The active protection system uses a combination of hardware and software components. The hardware component is a motion detector, or accelerometer, embedded in the motherboard which continually senses system orientation and movement. The software component receives and interprets signals from the accelerometer, differentiates between potentially harmful movements and repetitive motion, and signals the hard drive to stop when a potentially damaging event is predicted. The software component also includes a system tray icon and properties window.

The IBM Hard Drive Active Protection System protects only the primary hard disk drive on select ThinkPad computers using Microsoft Windows Vista, XP or Windows 2000. The protection system does not support protection of any secondary hard disk drives, including those installed in an UltraBay drive bay.

There's still one advantage to having Thinkpad's protection system installed, even if you don't need it: Turn your Thinkpad into a Wii!

Drive arrived today (just two days after ordering, and choosing cheapest shipping method - 5-7 days, I believe!). I'm going to image my current drive (using Acronis) to it and see how it goes. I will leave the Lenovo APS active, and see how it goes in conjunction with the Seagate on-disk version.

Does anyone know if there is a utility or UI from Seagate to enable/disable the on-disk solution, and/or tweak it's settings? I bought the OEM version so it shipped without any software. I'll google around their site looking for something but if anyone already knows, would love to hear!

Thanks

Well DUHhhhhhh ! Now that I look closer, and read the post above by DenTP4rm more closely, I see that my drive is indeed the ST9160823AS, and not the ST9160823ASG, with the "G" designating the G-force protection! So - the article I was reading was all about the "G" version, but the model number they gave on the article page was for the non-G model, and that's what I ended up ordering - by mistake!

At this point, I don't want to bother returning it, so I'll just go with the non-G version and keep using the APS. Oh well ... next time, I'll buy the 'G' version - it's only a few dollars more!

===============
Update - just in case others find this thread and need to know; this website http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?l ... 04090aRCRD
shows the jumper settings for the drive. Basically, with the jumper ON, the drive is limited to SATA 1 speed (150 MB/sec), and with the jumper OFF, the drive operates at SATA 2 speeds (300 MB/sec). While the presence of 4 jumper pins suggest other settings, the only two that are documented are present/absent, so there is no documented use for moving the jumper to other pins.

My T60 has a SATA 2 interface, so I'm going to go with the jumper off.

Steerpike wrote: My T60 has a SATA 2 interface, so I'm going to go with the jumper off.

Hey Steerpike,
How did you determine that your T60 has the SATA 2 interface? What model do you have?
thnx,
D

DenTP4rm wrote:

Steerpike wrote: My T60 has a SATA 2 interface, so I'm going to go with the jumper off.

Hey Steerpike,
How did you determine that your T60 has the SATA 2 interface? What model do you have?
thnx,
D

I went to the CDW site and looked up my purchase there. CDW have half-decent model spec sheets online; here's my page:
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/defaul ... EDC=927156
and on that page, click on the 'specs' tab,
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/specs. ... _-Main+Tab
and on that page, drill down on 'storage controller' (way down the long list). For mine, I see:
Storage Controller

Serial ATA Interface Serial ATA-300
Type Serial ATA/IDE

The above links don't seem to be password protected, BUT, I am 'cookied' on their site so who knows.

I would suggest using a google search with your model number and a 'site:cdw.com' qualifier - eg, for me, I can google:
2623DAU site:cdw.com
and this worked.

FYI, the machine has been working like a champ today since I did the imaging overnight! My windows Vista 'experience' score has gone from 5.0 to 5.2 on the disk drive. For what it's worth