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Seagate 320gig 7200.4 - no sudden motion sensor?

T

thesmoth

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 7, 2008
367
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I cannot get the sudden motion sensor working. I went into the terminal and made sure it was turned on, but when I move my computer around the hard drive does NOT lock up like it used to with the stock drive. It makes a wierd whirring noise instead, which makes me concerned.

Are apple stock hard drives the only ones that work with the sudden motion sensor for locking up the hard drive upon sudden movement? Aside from making sure the sudden motion sensor is activated in the terminal, is there anything I can do to make it work with the seagate 7200.4 320 gig drive?
 
No one uses an after market hard drive and can still use the sudden motion sensor?
 
This is a very simple question that should apply for 90% of this forum and i've never seen it answered, and I can't find it anywhere on apple's website or google.
 
I can tell you that my late 2008 MBP came with a Hitachi drive that used its own motion sensor. When I replaced it with a drive that had no own motion sensor it didn't seem to do have any motion sensitivity at all.

So contrary to popular claims that you should get a drive without a sensor and that the MBP uses its own internal sensor to park the drive it does not seem to work that way (at least not with Unibody Macbooks).
 
Timur said:
I can tell you that my late 2008 MBP came with a Hitachi drive that used its own motion sensor. When I replaced it with a drive that had no own motion sensor it didn't seem to do have any motion sensitivity at all.

So contrary to popular claims that you should get a drive without a sensor and that the MBP uses its own internal sensor to park the drive it does not seem to work that way (at least not with Unibody Macbooks).
Click to expand...

I bought the seagate WITHOUT a motion sensor on purpose because everyone here says that it conflicts with the macbook pro's own internal sudden motion sensor. This would seem to be BS because the macbook doesn't even seem to have a built in sudden motion sensor, and it was just on the hard drive.

But does this still mean that the after market hard drives that come with sudden motion sensors don't work with mbp's?
 
One more time. This is an important piece of information to get figured out so that other people can find it if they need it.

I'd like to know this answer to this question, as i've never seen it anywhere before.
 
But does this still mean that the after market hard drives that come with sudden motion sensors don't work with mbp's?
Click to expand...

Other drive manufacturers allow you to disable their SMS; Seagate doesn't.

thesmoth said:
I'd like to know this answer to this question, as i've never seen it anywhere before.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure the SMS is not on the drive itself (am I wrong? At least it used to be on the logic board). Have you tried a PRAM reset or an SMC reset?
 
Like I wrote before: Apple ships the Macbooks with Hitachi drives that come *with* internal motion sensors. I put mine into an external case and the motion sensor of the drive is audibly working when I move the case. On the other hand my drives that come *without* internal motion sensor audibly don't park the heads when I move the Macbook Pro (like the Hitachi did).

So yes, it's BS to say tht drives with internal motion sensor wont work. ;)

The Macbooks *do* have a motion sensor though (you can easily read its values out by software), but either it is not used for parking the drive's heads at all or it is set to be considerably less sensitive than the Hitachi's internal one (which seems a bit too sensitive for me anyway).
 
So the question now is which drives with build in motion sensors will actually work with the macbook pros?

Will the western digital ones and the seagate ones work?
 
No one has successfully put in a new hard drive that could use the shock sensor? There is no info about this anywhere and i find that hard to believe.
 
On more time. It's crazy that not a single person has an answer to this.


That the latest apple update fix this issue?
 
You should wait a little longer for replies :S

Anyway I use an aftermarket 7K320 with my MBP and the motion sensor works fine. I highly doubt the MBP itself has a sensor as that is redundant. I would think that Seagate drives will work just as well if they have SMS built in.
 
Ty for the link, that is rather good info and I stand corrected. My first MBP came CTO with a 7K200 with the built in SMS enabled and it works fine with my 7K320 so I guess it does not matter for Hitachi drives.

I have to wonder though why Apple is still putting the SMS chips into their notebooks as most if not all the drives they ship with already has it built in.
 
lixuelai said:
Ty for the link, that is rather good info and I stand corrected. My first MBP came CTO with a 7K200 with the built in SMS enabled and it works fine with my 7K320 so I guess it does not matter for Hitachi drives.

I have to wonder though why Apple is still putting the SMS chips into their notebooks as most if not all the drives they ship with already has it built in.
Click to expand...

No worries, I was only given the link recently. Definitely a dodgy area...
 
I have a WD Scorpio Black 7200RMP 320GB drive with a drop sensor (WD3200BJKT) installed in a 17" ubMBP (Early 2009).

There is no conflict with the MBP's built-in SMS, even when the SMS has been "tripped" (gently). That assumes the thresholds for the MBP's SMS and the BJKT's drop sensor are similar, but I did the test a few times so I would imagine both were likely to have "tripped".
 
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