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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.
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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 --
Will soon appear under an LED on the new Thinkpad's keyboard.
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.
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?
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Modern hard drives have extra space available on them reserved for remapping sectors that fail. The drive can detect these failing as the voltages from the heads fall when reading data. At the first sign of this, the drive logic reads the data, moves it off to a reserved sector, maps it internaly, and goes on about its business. Now, there are a few things that can cause this.
First off, there is straight manufacturing errors. Less common than they used to be (hdd's used to come with tables of bad sectors printed on thier label) but they do happen.
Now, they can also occour when a read head is literaly floating microns above a spinning platter revolving at around 3000 rpm's. Whack that drive with a hammer and the head could contact the media, effectively scratching the disk. Depending on the severity there may be no damage, a bad sector could begin to form, the head could be damaged, or the drive could be shattered to bits.
Moving the head off the platter (or towards the center depending on thier parking mechanics) will almost eliminate problems resulting from the head contacting the media.
Now, parking the head will not add any stability to the drive, but it will greatly increase the g's a drive can experience before being damaged.
If your disk breaks into two pieces, you are going to need to call these people.
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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.
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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.
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...
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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.
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