Thinkpads Forum

I am in the process of replacing the internal and UltraBay drives in my W500 with Corsair SSDs.

Do I need to disable the Active Protection System, or will it take itself out of the loop automagically, since it is no longer necessary?

Any experiences out there by anyone with an SSD in a Thinkpad?

I would say no because there's no moving parts to break if you drop it.

gpvillamil wrote:I am in the process of replacing the internal and UltraBay drives in my W500 with Corsair SSDs.

Do I need to disable the Active Protection System, or will it take itself out of the loop automagically, since it is no longer necessary?

Any experiences out there by anyone with an SSD in a Thinkpad?

If you have another hard drive in Ultra Bay, yes, use it. See this link:
http://www.pc.ibm.com/europe/think/en/a ... &cc=europe

Let me rephrase the question:

When the SSD is installed, it is essential that it NOT be paused when the computer is moved.

Does APS realize that the drive is an SSD, and hence doesn't pause it, or do I have to manually disable APS?

Turns out no configuration is necessary to APS with SSDs installed.

I put two SSDs in my W500 (internal + ultrabay), played a bunch of videos, shook the machine, video kept playing.

The SSDs just ignore the head park message.

APS only controls the Primary HDD (not secondary/ultrabay drives) and it is useless (non-functional) when an SSD is being used as the primary drive. if your primary drive has been upgraded to an SSD, then uninstall the APS driver, since your system does not need it anymore.

"The protection system will *not* control a second hard drive that is either attached externally to your computer or installed in your computer's Ultrabay."

techcafe wrote:APS only controls the Primary HDD (not secondary/ultrabay drives) and it is useless (non-functional) when an SSD is being used as the primary drive. if your primary drive has been upgraded to an SSD, then uninstall the APS driver, since your system does not need it anymore.

"The protection system will *not* control a second hard drive that is either attached externally to your computer or installed in your computer's Ultrabay."

I'm so, so happy you posted this. I never realized it worked like that.

returnzer0 wrote:

techcafe wrote:APS only controls the Primary HDD (not secondary/ultrabay drives) and it is useless (non-functional) when an SSD is being used as the primary drive. if your primary drive has been upgraded to an SSD, then uninstall the APS driver, since your system does not need it anymore.

"The protection system will *not* control a second hard drive that is either attached externally to your computer or installed in your computer's Ultrabay."

I'm so, so happy you posted this. I never realized it worked like that.

actually, i just discovered, there is conflicting information about APS vs 2nd/UltraBay HDD. as posted by another member in this thread, Lenovo's European site says that a secondary HDD in the UltraBay IS supported by APS. so, maybe the APS driver has been updated to support secondary drives. btw, not all mobile hard drives support the command (issued by the APS subsystem) that instantly parks the R/W heads. of course, APS is irrelevant if you're using SSDs exclusively.

If you check out APS software changelog you will see that:

Version 1.30b
- (New) Support APS feature of 2nd HDD on Ultrabay Slim.
- ...

So, yeah, they have implemented this a while ago.

If the APS drivers are not installed, do you get exclamation marks in Device Manager for devices without drivers?