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Active Protection System and HDD in the ultrabay?
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 2:55 pm
by garnet
Hi
I have a SSD as main disk. The old HDD is in the ultrabay. Does Active Protection System stop an HDD in the UB? Did a quick laptop shake while playing mp3 from the UB HDD and it didnt stop.
I have Active Protection System disabled due to having a SSD, but I'd like to have it on and only stop the UB HDD.
Almost sure this is impossible. Any other view?
Re: Active Protection System and HDD in the ultrabay?
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 3:28 pm
by Harryc
From reading your post I can't tell whether APS was on of off when you did the shake test.
Re: Active Protection System and HDD in the ultrabay?
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 6:46 pm
by garnet
it was on for the shake test only.
Re: Active Protection System and HDD in the ultrabay?
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 6:54 pm
by Harryc
Good question, says here APS supports a second hard drive in the Ultrabay for the T and R series ...
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/think/thinkvan ... h/aps.html
Re: Active Protection System and HDD in the ultrabay?
Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:32 am
by garnet
sounds promising. I might need to update to the latest version. Still, the problem with 'not needing to stop an SDD' remains.
If it indeed stops a HDD in the UB it will stop the main disk too (SSD).
So what is better, not to stop any of them or to stop both?
Re: Active Protection System and HDD in the ultrabay?
Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:37 am
by Harryc
Of course an SSD has no moving parts, so there's nothing to stop. I am fairly certain the SSD would just ignore the head park message.
Re: Active Protection System and HDD in the ultrabay?
Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 12:55 pm
by garnet
Harryc wrote:Of course an SSD has no moving parts, so there's nothing to stop. I am fairly certain the SSD would just ignore the head park message.
just to confirm - the latest APS stops the HDD in the UB.
As for the SSD, as you said, it probably doesnt matter anyway.
If someone knows if that might ruin the SSD please let us know.
Re: Active Protection System and HDD in the ultrabay?
Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 5:25 pm
by yak
Recently I replaced a HDD in my X200 with an SSD (Intel 320, 160GB version). My understanding was that APS would interfere so I disabled it in Control Panel.
Today I played with the Power Manager and its InstantResume option. It turns out that it requires the APS to be activated. This forced me to actually test the behavior of APS with an SSD.
As I also have the UltraBase X200 and an UltraBay HDD adapter (with a WD Scoprio Black 320GB in it), I tested that as well.
The result: APS completely ignores the SSD even if activated. The status tab on the APS applet in the Control Panel shows that no shocks are detected no matter how hard I shake the laptop. Video file playback confirms it -- no stuttering. I got the same result after docking the X200 in the UltraBase with empty bay slot. Only after I inserted the HDD, the APS kicked in and started parking the heads whenever I shook the laptop. The status tab started reporting shocks as well. The SSD remained unaffected though -- video file playback wasn't interrupted.
This means that it is OK to install APS on all systems, whether SSD only, HDD only, or mixed. The SSD will not be affected.
Things like InstantResume or Screen Reading Optimizer show that APS may be useful for things other than HDD protection so it's always good to have it on a ThinkPad, even without HDDs.