New Toshiba Laptop

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:21:49 GMT, "Samuel Shulman"
wrote:

>Whenever my laptop moves I get the following message: Vibration has been
>detected in the PC the hard disk drive head is temporarily moved to a safe
>position
>
>I can check the box of Don't show me this message but why do I get it in
>the first place
>
>Thank you,
>Samuel
>
>


They're showing off, telling you about what they consider a
nifty feature. You get the message because of this, and
because it's actually doing as it mentioned when movement is
detected. In normal uses, the movement may cause no harm,
but it's a bit too late for it to wait to see how bad the
impact after a movement was, to THEN try to park the hard
drive. It has to be proactive in doing that every time the
designed sensor registers high enough that it "Might" be in
a situation where a jarring impact could result.
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>> Whenever my laptop moves I get the following message: Vibration has been
>> detected in the PC the hard disk drive head is temporarily moved to a
>> safe
>> position
>>
> It`s probably `cos your laptop moved,

Don't you think the clue might be in the name - laptop. They are designed to
sit on laps. Laps move. I have encountered countless laptops and not one has
ever 'complained' about being positioned on a lap, incurring the expected
lap movement!

> and it contains a hard drive.

Have you got one without a hard drive then?

> Hard drives don`t like being moved while they are
> spinning.

No, hard drives don't care - the are callous things, quite happy to 'chew'
platters when rattled. However laptop hard drives are designed to go in
laptops. Laptops go on laps. Laps move. So laptop hard drives are designed
to cope with laps moving. It is something else in the laptop that doesn't
like being moved. The laptop obviously has a 'time of the month' sensor. Try
giving it the iron and a pile of clothes, then perhaps the laptop will stop
moaning about sitting on a moving lap.
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"kony" wrote in message

> On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:21:49 GMT, "Samuel Shulman"
> wrote:
>
>>Whenever my laptop moves I get the following message: Vibration has been
>>detected in the PC the hard disk drive head is temporarily moved to a safe
>>position
>>
>>I can check the box of Don't show me this message but why do I get it in
>>the first place
>>
>>Thank you,
>>Samuel
>>
>>
>
>
> They're showing off, telling you about what they consider a
> nifty feature. You get the message because of this, and
> because it's actually doing as it mentioned when movement is
> detected. In normal uses, the movement may cause no harm,
> but it's a bit too late for it to wait to see how bad the
> impact after a movement was, to THEN try to park the hard
> drive. It has to be proactive in doing that every time the
> designed sensor registers high enough that it "Might" be in
> a situation where a jarring impact could result.

Right. so check the "Don't show me" box and be comforted
in that the laptop OS knows the drive is, very temporarily,
unavailable, and can handle it gracefully.

Luck;
Ken
 >> Stay informed about: New Toshiba Laptop 

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Paul wrote:
[snip]
> This is from the ATA-ATAPI spec D1699r4c-ATA8-ACS.pdf .
>
> "7.48.17 Enable/Disable the Free-fall Control feature set
>
> Subcommand code 41h allows the host to enable the Free-fall
> Control feature set. To enable the Free-fall Control feature set,
> the host writes the Count field with the requested free-fall
> control sensitivity setting and executes a SET FEATURES command
> with subcommand code 41h.
> The sensitivity is selected on a scale from 00h to FFh. A value
> of zero selects the device vendor's recommended setting. Other
> values are vendor specific. The higher the sensitivity value, the
> more sensitive the device is to changes in acceleration.
>
> Enabling or disabling of the Free-fall Control feature set, and
> the current free-fall sensitivity setting shall be preserved by
> the device across all forms of reset (i.e., power-on, hardware,
> and software resets)."
> So there is apparently a control for it. All you need is some software
> that gives you that degree of control. On your machine right now,
> either the BIOS setup screen, or something added to the OS, may be
> attempting to set the feature on.
>
> The feature only works, if the hard drive supports it. Not all hard
> drives have free fall (G-force) sensors, so that command won't work
> on some drives.

Not completely true Paul. This T60 ThinkPad (as well as my R51 and T43 TPs)
have accelerometers / 'free fall sensors' built into the *motherboard* and,
with the aid of the "ThinkVantage Active Protection System" software, will
park the heads of most HDDs made in the last ~7 years, whether the HDD has
it's own free fall sensors or not.

The TV Active Protection has a multitude of settings that allow you to set
sensitivity as well as have the software ignore repeating 'shock patterns',
(and set the sensitivity of *that* setting seperately) such as you might
find on a train, so that you can work during your rail commute. It's a great
piece of software / hardware.

Of course, I could always fit a HDD that has it's own built-in free-fall
protection (adds ~40% to the HDD price here), such as I think you're
describing above, for a 'belt and braces' approach. However, to adjust the
parameters of HDD-based shock protection system I would guess that you'd
download and run an application from the HDD manufacturer? I doubt that (in
my case) the ThinkVantage Active Protection System could access it.

The OP's laptop might be using mobo-based accelerometers and there could be
a Toshiba tool to adjust the sensitivity, or even turn the feature off as is
possible with (most?) ThinkPads made after ~2004.

Then again, it might simply be HDD based as you posit and settings / on/off
might need to be accessed via the HDD manufacturer's utilities. Or it might
even be necessary to swap out the HDD.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

> So you could replace the hard drive, with a hard drive model
> known not to have the sensor at all. That would definitely stop
> it.
>
> A particular kind of hard drive, which won't have that kind of
> protection, is called an SSD. An SSD is a storage device, based
> on NAND flash chips, rather than a rotating platter. There are no
> heads to protect in such devices, so no reason for the device
> to listen to a "Free-fall Control" setting. If you drop your
> laptop, there is less chance of breaking this kind of hard drive.
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&name=SSD
>
> SSD drives are quite expensive, for the quantity of gigabytes of
> storage you get. As long as you weren't expecting to store a whole bunch
> of
> movies on the thing, it might work out for you.
>
> Some of those drives, draw a bit more power than a regular hard drive.
> This one for example, is rated at 5.2 watts. A regular hard drive for
> a laptop, might be around 2 watts. Extra watts means extra heat.
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139133
>
> This one is rated 1.7 watts while reading, and 3.1 watts while
> writing. So it's a bit better.
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148348
>
> And this one is rated 2W, so is close to your existing hard drive.
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227542
>
> Now, once you install one of those, you're still responsible for
> doing regular backups of the hard drive. That means storing a copy
> of what is stored on the SSD, on an external hard drive. Some
> SSD drives fail "out of the blue" when you least expect it.
> Just because they're made of nothing but silicon chips, doesn't
> mean they last forever. They're more flaky than that.
>
> With regard to how flexible computers are, lots of models of
> computers, you can do virtually anything you want to them (change
> components and
> they don't care). There are a few computers though, which rely on
> particular brands or items to be present in the computer at all times.
> This makes
> the replacement of components, or modifications to the computer
> difficult. I don't expect a problem with your particular computer, but
> there are
> some pretty weird machines out there, when it comes to some of the
> ones with high security features. The best way to learn about things
> like this, is to Google the brand and model number of the computer,
> and learn as much as you can, about the experiences of other
> users. That will prepare you for what to expect.
>
> So I hope this is just a software setting, and that it won't
> cost you any money to fix. But if the machine insists on leaving
> that feature enabled, changing some hardware will stop it
>
> Paul
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~misfit~ wrote:
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Paul wrote:
> [snip]
>> This is from the ATA-ATAPI spec D1699r4c-ATA8-ACS.pdf .
>>
>> "7.48.17 Enable/Disable the Free-fall Control feature set
>>
>> Subcommand code 41h allows the host to enable the Free-fall
>> Control feature set. To enable the Free-fall Control feature set,
>> the host writes the Count field with the requested free-fall
>> control sensitivity setting and executes a SET FEATURES command
>> with subcommand code 41h.
>> The sensitivity is selected on a scale from 00h to FFh. A value
>> of zero selects the device vendor's recommended setting. Other
>> values are vendor specific. The higher the sensitivity value, the
>> more sensitive the device is to changes in acceleration.
>>
>> Enabling or disabling of the Free-fall Control feature set, and
>> the current free-fall sensitivity setting shall be preserved by
>> the device across all forms of reset (i.e., power-on, hardware,
>> and software resets)."
>> So there is apparently a control for it. All you need is some software
>> that gives you that degree of control. On your machine right now,
>> either the BIOS setup screen, or something added to the OS, may be
>> attempting to set the feature on.
>>
>> The feature only works, if the hard drive supports it. Not all hard
>> drives have free fall (G-force) sensors, so that command won't work
>> on some drives.
>
> Not completely true Paul. This T60 ThinkPad (as well as my R51 and T43 TPs)
> have accelerometers / 'free fall sensors' built into the *motherboard* and,
> with the aid of the "ThinkVantage Active Protection System" software, will
> park the heads of most HDDs made in the last ~7 years, whether the HDD has
> it's own free fall sensors or not.
>
> The TV Active Protection has a multitude of settings that allow you to set
> sensitivity as well as have the software ignore repeating 'shock patterns',
> (and set the sensitivity of *that* setting seperately) such as you might
> find on a train, so that you can work during your rail commute. It's a great
> piece of software / hardware.
>
> Of course, I could always fit a HDD that has it's own built-in free-fall
> protection (adds ~40% to the HDD price here), such as I think you're
> describing above, for a 'belt and braces' approach. However, to adjust the
> parameters of HDD-based shock protection system I would guess that you'd
> download and run an application from the HDD manufacturer? I doubt that (in
> my case) the ThinkVantage Active Protection System could access it.
>
> The OP's laptop might be using mobo-based accelerometers and there could be
> a Toshiba tool to adjust the sensitivity, or even turn the feature off as is
> possible with (most?) ThinkPads made after ~2004.
>
> Then again, it might simply be HDD based as you posit and settings / on/off
> might need to be accessed via the HDD manufacturer's utilities. Or it might
> even be necessary to swap out the HDD.
>
> Cheers,

I wasn't even aware they did a motherboard version of free-fall.

I've only heard of it existing on hard drives.

The first time I heard about the hard drive version, someone reported
a weird icon showing on their task bar, and they couldn't figure out
what it was.

Paul
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