Free-Fall Sensor

i ordered a m1530 with the 200gb 7200rpm hdd

it says it comes with a free-fall sensor

can anyone explain what this does? thanks

 

if i understand it correctly, its supposed to lock the hard drive when the laptop accelerates to a certain speed; this is to prevent data loss (if you were to drop it)

 

The reader/writer head of the hard drive automatically ''parks'' at its original position to stop it form scratching the disc.

 

interesting.
thanks for the info

 

I have this drive. Mine is a Seagate. You can check out the description of the free fall sensor on Seagate's website. By the way, the 200 GB 7200 rpm Seagate is a nice drive. Pretty quiet.

 

Good thread I've been meaning to ask this as well since Dell mistakenly gave me a 160GB FFS 7200RPM drive instead of what I ordered (160GB 5200RPM).

 

The Seagate HD (they claim) can detect if you are dropping you computer, and it will move the read/write heads away from the platter. See http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/03/13/seagate_ships_momentus_7200-2/.

 

I suspect the danger is that if you are using the computer on a train or something it might repeatedly mistake the swaying of the carriage for drops and keep interrupting the disk access by lifting the heads off the disk. Anyway, I probably would have gone for this shock protection if I could... but I guess it is only effective for a computer that is dropped while it is on. The heads are probably parked anyway for a computer that is in standby or off... so the benefit may not be as great as it might first sound.

 

I would think it would need slightly more acceleration than just the side to side swaying of a train.

 

But it do this work randomly

I've Seagate Momentus 120GB SATAII 7200RPM 8MB (ST9120823AS)

 

This is the drive that makes little clicking noises btw... hmmm also gets pretty hot

the free fall sensor detects when the drive is in "free fall"

 

Clicking ??

 

only problem I see with this drive might be that when you do drop it and if the laptop does break somehow, but it does not look broken physically on the ouside.... and you wan tto get it repaired under warranty, that warranty won't repair it because they know it was dropped! I hope it doesn't retain records of free falls or anything like that.....or whether it stays in park position after a free fall....

can anybody coment on this?

I mean we've all dropped our laptops and messed them up without damaging the outside...they are very fragile...and I would sure like to have somebody repair it without telling me I broke it because they KNOW I dropped it

 

Several uses have commented on hearing little clicking noises from the 7200 rpm Seagate drive... (myself included)... not really loud enough to bother anyone though.

 

I've got the Seagate 200 GB 7200 rpm drive, and I don't hear any clicking. It's a fairly quiet drive. My Thinkpad X60 has an active protection system for the hard drive which parks the heads when it detects sudden movement. The software can be adjusted for sensitivity and will ignore repetitive motions such as on a train.

 

I have a seagate 5400rpm hdd and it clicks when in high performance mode.

 

I have a Hitahci drive in my D620 at work - the clicking noise is quite apparent.

I have 2 Seagate Momentus drives in my M1730 in RAID 0 - the main reason I sold the Hitachi that came with the laptop, even thought it was also a 200GB 7200rpm, and purchased 2 Seagates (200gb at 7200rpm) is because Seagates do not have the clicking. They are completely quiet, and run cooler. Its the Hitachi's that have the clicking. Both my Seagates are in high performance mode - still no 'clicking'.

Im an IT Network Manager, and I always recommend Seagate drives for notebooks. Most, if not all, of the 7200rpm drives have the free fall sensor, but their reliability and quietness makes them the best in the market IMO.

 

The ones I have don't click but do run hot I noticed.

 

Does it really do it based on acceleration, or velocity? Because gravity is only 9.8 m / s^2 .... side to side swaying of the train can be more than a g in some cases. (Small but really quick bumps.)

 

I am extremely certain that there is some threshold height it must be "dropped" before the sensor parks the head.

 

Second that!

I have yet to hear any clicking noise for mine... Neither it gets hot relatively over short period of time.

 

I have a BIOS Beeper in my AW laptop, and I also have the freefall sensor. If I lightly throw it up in the air (about 2-3 inches out of my hands) it beeps. I'm supposing this is the beep for the "HDD has suspected freefall" or whatnot. And it will beep if I go down stairs really quickly, multiple times .

I'm wondering if it will affect my laptop's HDD life?

 

???????

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I think the whole free fall sensors, or accelerometers to detect a "fall" is garbage. My Studio 17 is mainly a desktop replacement don't expect many drops or usage while its moving.

Besides a free fall sensor or accelerometer, is constantly drawing power each cycle hundreds of times a second checking to see if the laptop is falling. That draws a tiny bit of juice which reduces your battery effciency and duration.


So no thanks.