Upgraded to SSD - HP 3D Driveguard

[ScottS50]

The hard drive on my wife's 5 year old Pavilion dv7 notebook finally crashed recently. I thought this would be a good time to try upgrading to a SSD. I chose the Samsung 850 EVO 250GB. Installation was easy, clean install of Windows 10 and so far the performance is amazing! A few drivers to clean up but overall it went pretty smoothly.

The last driver ("unknown device") to clean up has a Hardware ID of "ACPI\VEN_HPQ&DEV_0004". Apparently this is the "HP 3D Driveguard" driver, a safety mechanism to retract the read/write heads in case the laptop is overly bumped, dropped, etc.

My questions are:

1. Now that I have only an SSD, Driveguard serves no purpose?

2. However in the future, I may install a second HDD, in which case it makes sense to have Driveguard installed?

3. I've seen another HP notebook with Driveguard installed. From what I can tell, it does NOT give you any settings to tell it which drives to monitor? Or does it simply monitor all installed drives?

Thanks in advance for all comments!

[banhien · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Please allow me to answer your questions:

1. No, no need to install 3D Driveguard software when computer uses SSD.

2. It does make sense but Driveguard only monitors the only sensor for the primary slot.

3. ditto

Regards.

[ScottS50]

Hello banhein.

Thanks very much for the quick reply! And a follow-up question about DriveGuard:

From what I've seen on a different laptop, DriveGuard has no settings. I right click START, click MOBILITY CENTER, and among other features, there is HP 3D DriveGuard. There are no options available, you don't have the option to even enable or disable it. Only an "Information" button telling me what DriveGuard does.

Is this the way it really works? It just monitors the primary drive, with no other options available?

Thanks again.