Momentus Hard Drives work with APS?

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Phred · #1 Post by **Phred** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 3:47 pm

Will the Momentus 5400 FDE.2 Hard Drives work with the Active Protection System?

Edit: Information I have found that relates to, but does not answer my question:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Active_Protection_System (The harddisk support section is what made me ask this question in the first place).
http://www.nabble.com/What-Harddrives-t ... 19085.html
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... hard_disks
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=141718 (I think the answer to this guys question is incorrect).

Miller88 · #2 Post by **Miller88** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 5:27 pm

AFAIK, APS should work with any harddrive.

Phred · #3 Post by **Phred** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:39 pm

Thinkwiki has this to say about it:

HD-APS requires a hard-disk with head unload ramp technology and also support on the hard-disk firmware to unload heads without flushing the disk cache. This is required, because as soon as the APS system detects a shock is imminent, the system has less than 500ms to prepare for the shock.

Unloading heads without flushing the cache is done using the optional Unload Immediate feature of the IDLE IMMEDIATE ATA command. It finishes whatever sector write is in-flight, and immediately moves the heads to the unload ramp. Without this command, hard-disk APS cannot be trusted, as disks with big caches can take a lot of time to write it all to disk.

So far, only hard-disks with IBM APS firmware, as well as the consumer Fujitsu HV2060AH/MHV2100AH/MHV2120AH HDs have been found to implement all the necessary functions. Head unload technology is reasonably common in modern laptop disks, but the APS firmware is very rare in regular consumer products. Please note that newer Apple notebooks also support APS, so it is somewhat likely that their disks also support unload immediate or a similar feature.

DenTP4rm · #4 Post by **DenTP4rm** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:23 am

Phred,
Check out the thread Any issues with Seagate's new 7200.2 having shock protection.
This might have some helpful information. I cited at least one article on the Seagate site that could help.
all the best,
DenTP4rm

Phred · #5 Post by **Phred** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 11:39 am

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, it still didn't answer my question. My hard drive does not have the G designation so I'm assuming it does not have the built in shock protection. Here is the relevant info on my drive:

Seagate Momentus 5400 FDE.2 ST9160824AS - Hard drive - 160 GB - internal - 2.5" - SATA-150 - 5400 rpm - buffer: 8 MB

Phred · #6 Post by **Phred** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 5:45 pm

Oh well. I guess I'll e-mail Seagate.

Momentus Hard Drives work with APS?

Momentus Hard Drives work with APS?

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