The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Motion Sensing

    Discussion in 'Asus' started by jeanlo, May 2, 2005.

  1. jeanlo

    jeanlo Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    68
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Quick question:

    Do Asus notebooks have a feature like IBM's Active Protection System or Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS), that turn stop the hard drive when it detects sudden changes in motion?

    Jean
     
    jeanlo, May 2, 2005
    #1
  2. PROPortable

    PROPortable Company Representative

    Reputations:
    418
    Messages:
    8,782
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    205
    Most of the time I believe IBM's commercials are pretty funny...... because their harddrives are smarter than everyone elses....... Asus uses Hitachi drives, which were once known as Hitachi/IBM drives and once just IBM drives........ but these are still the same drives that IBM is using.

    Thanks,
    Justin
    PROPortable
    www.proportable.com
    [email protected]
     
    PROPortable, May 2, 2005
    #2
  3. jeanlo

    jeanlo Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    68
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    So is that feature built into the hard drive itself? I thought it was something on the system [:I]

    Jean
     
    jeanlo, May 2, 2005
    #3
  4. Andrew Baxter

    Andrew Baxter -

    Reputations:
    4,365
    Messages:
    9,029
    Likes Received:
    55
    Trophy Points:
    216
    the thing with IBM APS (Active Protection System) is that it's a combination of hardware and software. Using the APS and built in shock and tilt degree sensors the ThinkPad detects the amount of shake or tilt the notebook is experiencing. If it exceeds what is normal the head will be removed from the drive so it is not reading/writing data and in a position where damage can occur. The software actually has a learning feature so that over time the ThinkPad will "record" what is normal and what is not, so if you fly a lot for instance and your notebook gets jostled around a lot the threshold for activation the protection system will be a bit higher. There's also buit in utilities so you can tweak how sensitive the protection system is.

    Dell and other companies sometimes have a shock absorber and extra spacking around the hard drive in at least their business line of notebooks...you should certainly ask for this and check the specs if you're concerned about data protection. But most do not have the added shake sensors and APS like software protection.

    IBM is certainly the most mature on the market as far as hard drive protection, Toshiba is #2 with the most mature solution and they have some pretty nice patented features regarding theirs too (mostly to do with algorithms that detect level of shake).

    Here's an overview on APS:

    http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-53167

    DigitalCameraReview.com | BargainPDA.com | TabletPCReviewSpot.com
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 2, 2015
    Andrew Baxter, May 2, 2005
    #4