I'm considering buying a Toshiba notebook that has a TOSHIBA Hard Drive Impact Sensor (3D sensor).

I'll be running a desktop Linux distro on it like kubuntu, mint, or pclinux.

It says it's a combination of hardware and software and the CNET review of the model said it was a little too sensitive "out of the box".

Software comes with it to adjust the sensitivity, but I'm sure it's all Windows based.

Anybody have experience with one of these?

Does it play with Linux at all?

The last thing I want is for the disk to park itself during a write because I moved the notebook a little bit, etc..

TIA

Joe

I am new,so don't mind if my suggestion doesn't help you.I would suggest you to buy laptop which is already installed with windows and Linux Ubuntu.I herd some of the computer centers give you pre-installed windows and Ubuntu systems.It will save your energy and time.

Which Toshiba...

What's the model of the Toshiba laptop that you are considering?

My first thought is that I wouldn't buy a laptop that has an automatic shut-down system that my operating system can't control. If this feature is BIOS controlled and I could adjust the sensitivity with the keyboard, I might consider it. However, I would wonder how useful this feature is, how reliable and long lasting, and what the consequences are if it fails.

A well mounted HDD in a properly designed laptop case is not that fragile. Short of dropping the laptop on a stone hard floor, a laptop HDD has a pretty good survival rate.

Portege R705-P35

I called Toshiba support and they said it relies on a driver in Windows, so unless I enable it in my Windows vm (which won't be running most of the time anyway), it won't do anything.

I share your concern. I didn't want something that would shut down my computer in the middle of a write, etc., but, apparently, it won't be a problem.

We'll see if anyone eventually writes a Linux driver for it.

Joe

Who knows...

If it becomes a usual thing for laptops to have build in accelerometers for a panic shut down of a HDD as a safety feature and there is enough information available about the devices, someone will probably try to write a driver module.

You might call back to Toshiba to ask them how many partitions they are using in setting up this laptop and which one(s) may be removed if necessary. Some makers(HP) ship with 4 primary partitions, and it is good to know which one to delete for linux.

Good luck with the new machine.