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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."
seatbelts? Bet they hadn't though of that.
*goes off to patent it*
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Fatality rate among children riding in front seat with laptops doubles.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
when it can also detect incoming hammer blows and deflect them aside kung-fu style.
Also, adding further encouragement for me to throw my notebook across the room is the LAST think they need to do.
lysergically yours
This could be especially useful for, say, an iPod.
Improving durability of laptops is more important than kicking up clock speed or what have you, at least to the truly mobile user. Especially good would be if that durability could be made cheaper.
Something I've always found strange is that laptop carrying cases don't ever seem to advertise how well they PROTECT the laptop, which should be their primary goal, IMO. After having to go through great lengths to repair a new and expensive laptop after a drop, I'd be very appreciative of a carrying case that had this important end in mind.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
..pix of the crash test dummies when they smash the laptops into walls at 40 mph..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
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 --
Hm, if only there was something where it would switch to a backup battery for the harddrive to spin down, so that you don't have to fsck if you use ext2, That would be something I wouldn't mind purchasing.
Will soon appear under an LED on the new Thinkpad's keyboard.
So you mean that if I cause a traffic accident while coding, this will keep me from losing my data even when my brains splatter across the windshield? Cool...
I can see how this would help if you dropped it from a table, or your briefcase, but what do they have to help the laptop that reaches its terminal velocity? It's not accelerating, so it'll unlock the drive, and then SLAM! your data's gone! Skydiving with a satellite connection may not be popular at IBM, but hey, think of the rest of us, you insensitive clod!
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
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".
Interestingly enough, Connor came out with a disk drive 6 months later that did something similar, but it just cut write current rather than park the heads.
Even at under a tenth of a second, if it senses acceleration (you drop it) and the heads are in the process of moving across the platter to the park position at impact (it hits the floor), wouldn't that increase the chances of a large scratch as opposed to a small nick?
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
When my computer crashes, at least I'll have something soft to protect my head from banging it in frustration.
Who gives a shit about the hard drives, did you hear about the battery life that these bitches were supposedly putting out? 10 hours? That's unreal. Granted, the hard drive improvements are great, but you can't beat 10 hour battery life.
Save early, save often. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're too young.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
while it's interesting to know the computer's limits...well, I'd prefer to learn the limits without harming/destroying the computer ;)
I'm not sure if this is still the case with IBM laptops today but my A20m had some really nasty overheating issues.
The way it cools the CPU is via a tiny horizontaly mounted fan and a heatpipe running through a big aluminum block...which did virtualy nothing.
Worse yet it was fairly common for that fan system to die. There was a controller card which regulated the fan based on the CPU temptriture. In my laptop that part failed three times during 2 years. Worse yet the ONLY way to fix it is to replace the mothereboard, $400 (the fan itself which can die is $50).
I personaly find it odd that they're so concerend with HDs. I dropped that very same laptop numerous times and that never resulted in a damaged HD or even damaged plastic. (I can't say the same about Dell laptops)
10 Hour battery life on the other hand is something I'm curious about.
Also another HUGE weakness IMO are ports.
Like keyboard, network, USB etc. On a PC those ports are used maybe 10 times a year, on a laptop several times a day, at times roughly.
My current laptop can't play any sound because the 'sound out' port is broken (it's all made of plastic, cord got yanked sideways and the plug just shattered). A friend of mine has a useless laptop because the ethernet jack is broken. I have seen plenty of dell and IBM laptops where the powercable refuses to stay in.
Personaly I'm baffled how the designers didn't see these issues comming.
Fact is the laptops are NOT used gently for more than the first few days. Then they get tossed about and "ripped out" of networks at the end of a long day.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
If you're dropping a laptop, odds are you've more to worry about than just the hard drive. No? ;)
--<Mike>--
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.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
Air bags have explosives in them!
The honorable Senator Orrin Hatch should be interested in the project as it might help realize his dreams of exploding computers. You could use the explosives to save the disk when it is accelerated, or to blow up the computer when a copyright holder presses the self destruct.
BTW, if they really are like airbags, the devices can only be used once. However, what realy matters with analogies in business press releases is to make investors think of other market successes, and not really about the product.
What I really need is a microchip in my mouth which detects my foot approaching and can park my tongue in 1/10th of a second.
"Life has improved immeasurably since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously." - Hunter S. Thompson
The HD failed eventually... but after many a trips to the floor! Only hit concrete a few times, mostly hit carpet. When it failed it was just sitting there, but I guess it couldn't take the abuse :p
Two Words...
DUCT TAPE
--
yeah, when it hits the floor would be a poor time to START parking the heads.
According to this article at Techweb, the head park time was not "specified" in IDE drives, so they had to get drive manufacturers to meet their 200-300 millisecond requirement...
Thats a little slower than a 1/10 of a second.
This is only good for "Air Heads" who move their laptop while it's on.
Don't forget about iPods and other new portable media devices that use hard drives! This could vastly improve performance on them.
I've not seen enough to make me think it's a serious problem, but I have seen a few iPods that have serious hard drive failures that I can't fix, even with low-level formatting. It seems to me a lot of those errors are just because of people moving around too much with an iPod.
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.
I use a (now) old IBM Thinkpad T-22, but any of the T-Series can be set to run normally in a "closed" position. They weigh in between 4 and 5 lbs, and can be purchased with very nice 1400x1050 screens. They're not insanely expensive, either, unless you have to have the absolute latest and greatest model. Some do have Centrino, but you can also buy them with IBM's 802.11a/b/g solution. Thinkpads have typically handled Linux extremely well (mine does, anyway).
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