Momentus XT, Momentus, Momentus Thin, MobileMax, and other notebook drives

[rescares]

Hi,

I have a Momentus XT (Firmware SD24) it performs very well. However the Hard Drive protection which comes with my laptop (Sony Vaio S) is not working. When I go to "Vaio Control Center" this option does not appear (it was working with SD23).

Does anyone have the same issue? or test if this technology is working?

Thanks!

[fzabkar]

I believe that your laptop's shock protection feature requires a Sony HDD Protection Driver (and Sony HDD Protection Software?). You may wish to confirm that these components are present and functional.

To get a list of all available downloads for your model, replace the asterisk in the following URL with your model number, eg VGNSZ780.

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=*

Look under "Hard Drive".

I believe that shock protection is disabled for Solid State Drives. Could it be that your Vaio thinks your drive is an SSD?

If you run SeaTools for Windows, you should find a 512-byte file named *.ATA, where the asterisk will be your drive's serial number. This file will contain the information returned by the drive in response to an ATA Identify Device command. If you upload this file to a file sharing service, one of us will be able to analyse it for you.

Here is revision 6 of the ATA standard:
http://www.t13.org/documents/UploadedDocuments/docs2008/D1699r6-ATA8-ACS.pdf

See Section 7.16.7.

I suspect that the laptop's shock protection may also be disabled in those cases where the HD has its own internal Free Fall Protection. The *.ATA file should show this also.

[Hans.mo]

Hi fzabkar ,I had same issue on HP 3D driveguard. I upload my *.ata file to BDG.ATA file

[fzabkar]

Here are your Identify Device data laid out according to the format in the ATA standards document:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/5YX01D8Q.TXT

Word 217 is the media rotation rate. For an SSD the value would be 0 RPM. In your case it is 0x1C20 which is 7200 RPM.

http://www.google.com/search?q=0x1C20+in+decimal

Bit 5 of words 119 and 120 indicates whether the Free-fall Control feature set is supported and enabled. In your case they are both zero, indicating that the drive does not have its own internal free-fall sensor.

http://www.google.com/search?q=0x401E+in+binary
http://www.google.com/search?q=0x401C+in+binary

In short, I don't know if there is anything in the .ATA file that explains the change in the HDD protection behaviour. It would have been interesting to record the ATA data before and after the update, and then File Compare them, ie ...

FC /b SD23.ATA SD24.ATA

[Hamilton85]

Hard Drive protection appears not to be working on my 13" Macbook pro either

[rescares]

So, this must be a known issue, considering that many of us are facing the same problem.

If anyone with SD23 could upload the .ATA file in order to compare it with the SD24?

Thank you fzabkar! 

Cheers and Happy new year! 

[S Club 1]

Hi Hans - how did you fix the issue? I have the same problem on my HP Mini 5102, and it's a bit worrying to be carrying so much potentially unprotected data... Thanks!

[Calypso_ri]

HP 3D Driveguard not working on my laptop too.

HP 8510w Mobile Workstation w/ Momentus XT 320GB, firmware SD24.

So far I see, this is a problem with SD24 firmware. A lot of people mentioned that with SD23 this feature worked.

[rescares]

I think the same, there IS something with SD24 and the HDD Protection.

If anyone can analyse the problem, it would be great.

[Hans.mo]

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S Club 1 wrote:

Hi Hans - how did you fix the issue? I have the same problem on my HP Mini 5102, and it's a bit worrying to be carrying so much potentially unprotected data... Thanks!

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Sorry,no good news.....