G-Shock in Seagate 7200.3.

[yak]

Hi,

I'm considering a 320GB Seagate Momentus 7200.3 drive right now for my T60. I know there are two versions, with and without a built-in free-fall-detector.

I would rather use the ThinkPad APS system, partially because I really like the fact that I can turn it off.

Unfortunately, it seems that right now it is easier to get the g-force version so here's the question:

Does somebody know if this functionality can be disabled? Possibly by a jumper or something?

TIA,
yak

[yak]

Or maybe someone can tell me how it works. Is the sensitivity similar to what we have with APS? I.e. if you set it to max, start playing a video off the HDD and move the laptop slightly, will the video stop?

[Toshe]

You can read about my experience with the 7200.3 in this topic: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=69221

Mine failed just 2 weeks after I bought it - i was really disappointed with it. It was loud, it had a lot of vibrations and the writing process sounded like dropping marbles on the table.
Anyway, I'm used to having backup (my beautiful Freeagent Pro HDD), so I didn't lose any important data.
Yesterday I got a replacement. No more vibrations, no more games of marbles, no extra heat. Loud as before though.
I think it was just a bad copy, so if you're buying it, make sure the HDD doesn't suffer from any of these symptoms.

About the G-Force: I think it works. But I don't want to test it. I think you'd understand. After all it's a free fall sensor, not an accelerometer. I think this generally answers your question.

The APS works fine. When you shake the notebook a little bit it pauses the hard drive. E.g when playing a movie the movie just stops and you can see there is no read/write on the HDD.

However.. I read an article somewhere about APS -- how it's only effectively compatible with Hitachi HDDs. It explained that 'only' Hitachi hard drives can lift the read/write head in less than 300ms thus moving it to a safe position from the plates. The article also stated that no other hard drives could do that, since they had to write all the data from the cache to the disk first and then park the heads, a process which takes a lot longer time, which is insufficient for the hard drive to prepare itself for impact.
I don't remember if the article was published by Hitachi GS or not but it does make sense -- after all if the technology is most efficient only with Hitachi HDDs, this ensures them an exclusive sales window.

[gpvillamil]

I had very similar experience. I put a Seagate Momentus 320GB 7200.3 drive in my X61T, with a clean install of Vista SP1.

I noticed that I was getting occasional hangs (cursor would move but programs would freeze up), but attributed it to Vista.

Eventually I got a BSOD, looked at the Event Viewer, and noticed a whole bunch of disk errors in the log, mostly coinciding with the hangs.

I ran DiskCheckup, which turned up all sorts of alarming indicators in the SMART data. (Apparently Seagate disks do report errors in a slightly more drastic way, but this was out of line even with that.)

I replaced the Momentus with the Hitachi 320GB drive, and it has been a world of difference - boot times are halved, quiet, and no errors at all in the SMART utility or the Event Viewer. (Clearly the slow boot times with the Seagate drive were due to retries.)

Also, the Hitachi drive appears to be a hybrid disk, Vista reports 387MB of NV Cache.

[Toshe]

Well, whichever brand you go with, one thing is certain -- you must invest in an external HDD. I backup my most important data once a week.
At least Seagate HDDs fail in different way -- they can still boot up. I've had IBM/Hitachi HDDs that won't even boot.

Btw, on a scale 1 to 5 how noisy is the new Hitachi when idle (idle meaning only spinning)?

Clearly we'll have to wait 3-4 years until SSDs become more reliable and affordable.