Thinkpads Forum

I've been using my T61p lately for reading on the bus, and listening to music. Actually, it is becoming my "mp3 player" and I'm waiting on a 500gb samsumg drive to put in my ultrabay. I'll have it in my messenger bag to play music while I walk place to place.

But, I just installed the APS driver and I've been finding it pretty annoying.

Is it really a risk to the drives if I don't use it? I mean, they usually say how they can handle 350G's or so.

The APS system just doesn't work consistently. I set it on low sensitivity, and I've tested it out by closing the lid and thrashing it around to hear if my music stops and seems to be fine. But then when I just put it in my bag and not even start walking, it parks the drive. Also the busses I ride are trolleys so it vibrates alot and doesn't work well for music when it periodically stops playing.

I was wondering if maybe it doesn't like certain orientations, but it behaves different when I test it at home in my hands, and when I put it in my bag somehow.

wow, you've got a very expensive "mp3 player"!

I believe the original idea behind APS system is to protect data and avoid damage by accident, not frequent shakes. For that reason, it is very sensitive to shock even you set the detection sensitivity to low.

For your sake, you should not let your T61p on at all when you are walking. If you want to listen to music on move, get a real MP3 player.

For your sake, you should not let your T61p on at all when you are walking. If you want to listen to music on move, get a real MP3 player.

Thats no fun. Really? It seems to me like there would be hardly any vibration in my bag other than gentle rocking while walking. Aside from it being a thinkpad, what makes it a no no in general to have a laptop running in your bag on the go? It doesn't get very hot. The only argument I can think of is if it is gonna damage the hard drive or data.

If I *could* get a high capacity mp3 player with a beefy 500GB, it would use a hard drive inside anyway! All high capacity mp3 players pretty much use hard drives, and they get thrashed around pretty bad and seem to survive.


For the APS, lenovo does say it's supposed to protect your hard drives even on a train or w/e with continuous vibrations. Says it will just adjust accordingly to provide protection.

Isn't the main risk and reason for APS in case of dropping your laptop so it can park the drive before impact to save your data?

Double-click on the APS icon in the Traybar and you can change the sensitivity.

I don't use my machine while walking, but I do while on a bus, streetcar, train or in a car. Small vibrations and repetitive vibrations don't kick off APS into action, but big vibrations (buses in particular) do kick it into action and I think I prefer that for hard drive safety.
... JDH

Wait for SSDs to become cheap and get one for your laptop ... those are immune to vibrations.

What about using something that can buffer a lot when playing music? E.g. in WinAmp you can set output buffer to 20 seconds and also input/mp3 to always buffer whole file.

Or turn HDAPS off. Yes of course, you may lose your data when you accidentally throw the computer out of nearby window, but you can also lose the data when the hard drive just fails by itself, so you have to make backups even with HDAPS on, so it shouldn't be that important to very slightly reduce the risk of losing them.

A couple of suggestions:
1. burn the songs on DVD/CD and play them from the built-in DVD player.
2. set up a RAM disk and load the songs into the RAM disk and play them from there.

I do have the sensitivity set to low in APS. I'll have to experiment with it some more. I wonder if it doesn't like being oriented sideways in my bag or something. But it is definitley less movement while walkin than in a car or bus.

wait for SSDs, hehe. Well I just got the 500GB drive in my ultrabay now. But, yeah I can't wait till I can get crazy SSD's in the future. Maybe a wristwatch with a few TB on there?


I use foobar2000, and I just discovered I can tell it to buffer entire songs up to specified size in KB. I'll see how that works.