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IBM Introduces 'Air Bags' For Laptop Hard Drives
Ruger writes "Reported in PCWorld this morning, IBM has introduced a technology for their new laptop hard discs which has a similar concept to airbags in cars. Active Protection System (APS) is a microchip put on the system board that senses acceleration. It parks the head of a hard drive inside a tenth of a second, significantly reducing the risk of damage to data. IBM also has a a press release on the new ThinkPad R50 and T41 models that include this technology, for those interested in the company line."
This could be especially useful for, say, an iPod.
You have been playing the latest and greatest video game for a few hours when you make a mistake and pound the keyboard. The hardrives senses it and locks you down without saving. Whoops.
I hope this thing isn't too sensitive - it would be quite annoying if a bumpy car ride or turbulence on an airplane would interrupt any hard drive activity...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
how many Laptop Harddisks have been damaged due this very specific problem of the head not being parked(?).during a deacceleration. Does it add any mechanical stability to the harddisk ? What if the hard disk breaks in two pieces ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Spend those bucks on a ruggedized laptop, like the Panasonic toughbooks, or one from dozens of other vendors. I work in the public safety field and use them all the time (ie; laptops in police cruisers). They're out there, and they're friggin indestructable. They also cost more than a comparable machine in a plastic shell, ie; the LCD is behind quarter inch plexi, the case is made out of hardened steel, the internals are mounted on shock absorbing rubber doodads, etc..
You get what you pay for in the end.
You can cough up 3 grand for a cute and trendy iBook, or for a virtually indestructable brick.
Oh yeah, before I forget, they weigh a friggin' ton as a rule. Weight is a big selling point for mobile users.
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Does anyone know of a laptop that can run while closed (warwalking), has SXGA or better resolution, is reasonable light, and doesn't rely on centrino or other non-Linux garbage?
On a relevant enote, it might be worthwhile for them to toss solid-state storage on the motherboard through a usb interface. 256mB wouldn't significantly add to costs, but could garuntee that important data would survive.
I suspect that the majority of damaged files on laptops occurs as a result of power failures rather than as a result of laptop frizbee.
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Even worse. Think about the poor unsusptecting souls that attempt to use this in a car/train/bus/airplane/whatever. You will be accelerating quickly quite often while in a vehicle, and the laptop is not actually in any danger, but you are trying to get your work done. Just have to wait untill the next red-light/airport/train-stop I guess Fuzzy The Quantum Duck
while it's interesting to know the computer's limits...well, I'd prefer to learn the limits without harming/destroying the computer ;)
I have worked on hard drives and shock sensors. The retract time is far longer than the impact time. The impact of hitting the floor will be over in milliseconds. In that time, the heads will not even reach the ramp.
The only thing that would offer real protection is to sense the 0 G condition when the computer is falling. It cost bucks to be sensitive enough to sense 0 G. It costs more bucks than anyone is willing to put into a mobo.
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Assuming a complete release and freefall, .1 seconds is enough time to drop only 5cm. So assuming they use 1G as the acceleration limit to set it off, there's little chance of it still being in the process of parking the head when it hits the ground, unless you only drop it 5cm, in which case it the impact won't likely be enough to do damage anyway. Also, that 0.1 seconds isn't the time it takes the head to park itself, it's the total reaction time. The heads move very fast, and the actual time it takes to park is going to be closer to 5ms. So the odds of the impact with the ground happening exactly during those 5ms are fairly low. All in all, the odds of this system actually causing more damage than would be done without it are very very low.
There's no way that if you drop your computer from five feet that it'll hit the floor faster than 1/10 of a second. By the time it hits the heads have bee parked. 9.8 Meters/Sec ^ 2 Right.....Do the math
I work providing technical support to at least 1000 people on campus, and lately (over the past two years), I've been seeing a LOT of hard drive failures. Most don't seem to be from people mistreating their laptops by shaking, dropping, banging, etc. Many of the computers never even move away from the desks that they sit on. I fail to understand why they are investing in air bags as opposed to making their hard drives more reliable in the first place. Don't get me wrong...I think this is a great idea, but I think their energy would be better spent in improving the quality of the hard drives themselves.