HP 3D Driveguard active for one drive only ? [ Edited ]

[Jirrick]

Hey guys,

I've bought and installed an OCZ Vertex 2 SSD couple days ago. I tell you, it works flawlessly! But here I come to my big disappointment: as I put my original HDD to UpgradeBay Cradle I also installed the 3D Driveguard SW because of protection of old HDD. I thought it would be possible to choose which drive I want to protect, but there isn't this kind of choice available! So I'm now in risk of damaging of my HDD while 3D Driveguard is off or messing my SSD performance with unnecessary data transfer interruptions whil 3D DriveGuard is on.

Can you please do something about it? I think as SSD prices are falling down and CDs and DVDs aren't useful anymore (so you can put another drive instead DVD writer) lots of people will be also in this trouble.

I'm running Win 7 Pro 64bit on Elitebook 8440p laptop.

Thanks, Jirrick

[HaggisCat]

I have been at this for a while and there is no solution and HP does know about it, but at present when you are running an SSD as your primary drive, Drive Guard will not recognize the secondary drive. I had one response where a person with a business laptop worked with a primary SSD and a standard drive _ in her case Drive Guard did see the secondary drive. To this day HP has not been able to figure why hers works and I can't get my dv8 to recognize the regular drive in the secondary bay.

 Take note that like many HP applications HP Drive Guard is poorly designed software and this is apparent from the statement above. So unless you are very clumsy and knock your laptop on the floor while it's on, then you don't need it and obviously when you are running two SSD's then you will definitely not need it.

 I will be installing a i7-940xm in my dv8 shortly and that will put it up to just under the 4 grand mark, so I am very carfull not to knock it off the table. With out HP DG you machine will boot faster too. It's just more bloat ware.

 When you close the lid to put it to sleep or on stand-by the arm in the drive gets parked anyway. The accelerometer and HP Drive Guard is just more stuff that HP had decided to fatten up their laptops with.

 And BTW the woman where hers worked properly was an Elitebook, I think. When I find the thread I will post the link.

 Good luck with this, but I wouldn't waste my time with it, I know HP certainly isn't wasting theirs.

[Jirrick]

As a user of Elitebook I have no problem with recognition of UpgradeBay drive and HP 3D DriveGuard list both drives as supported (screenshot below). I guess that Elitebooks have better support for additional drives than Pavillions (does HP provide official optical drive replacement caddy for them?) or is just blocked by bios to make people buy Elitebook.

I would be very nice to have my laptop powered by SSD only, but as long I’m just student SSD with bigger capacity than 100 gigs is unaffordable to me (especially after purchasing Elitebook and docking station) so because of capacity/price reason the second drive must be conventional HDD.

Maybe the best solution is to buy new (and bigger :-) ) HDD with internal free fall sensor and just uninstall that stupid Driveguard.

[HaggisCat]

At the time, for some unknown reason, HP offered the Samsung 256GB SSD for only 389.00 dollars, give or take. It's up at around 489.00$ now or probably more and it did come with a hard drive caddy.

 does HP provide official optical drive replacement caddy for them?   You asked

 Not sure what you mean by this question as the hard drive caddy will work and is the same for SSD and HDD. These can be found on e-bay for around 20.00$, HP wants 70.00$

 The free fall sensor is built into the mother board (I think) as any HDD will work in an HP laptop and an off the shelf HDD will not have a free fall sensor.

 I will ask you "is there such a thing as a hard drive with an internal free fall sensor" ?

 I guess there is _ interesting.

 http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Scorpio-Sensor-WD3200BJKT/dp/B001FBJJQ4

 But still, would HP Drive Guard recognize it when running a SSD as primary ???

 Or would the free fall sensor work when it was connected through USB, in which case it would be even more desirable to have it protected outside of the laptop.

[Jirrick]

I think that combination of 90 gig SSD for system and some 500 gig hdd for stuff like music, movies, images is ideal (despite my Driveguard issue). And as I spend about 1600 dollars on my laptop, docking station, new lcd panel and lastly the Vertex ssd (it was on sale) I'm not buying anything else this year.

I meant that HP offers original optical replacement caddy for Elitebooks and Probooks 6xxxB (called "SPS UpgradeBay Cradle", i got mine from local service part dealer for about 20 dollars), but I'm not sure that they provide such thing for Pavillion laptops. That's maybe why the second drive protection does work in Elitebook and doesn't in Pavillions. Sorry for kind of clumsy formulation.

Certainly the HP sensor is onboard, but as long as the HP 3D Driveguard isn't installed on computers it just consume few mW of energy. And yes there is the hard drive free fall technology, for example Seagate G-Force. Still it's not ideal as Driveguard have information such as lid-close sensor which can improve the prediction of shocks (The protection has two levels - first is with lid open when it parks heads only in case of fall and second one with closed lid when heads are parked - signalized by amber led - immediately after even slightest movement).

[HaggisCat]

Here is the other thread(s).

 http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-systems-and/Envy-17-and-HP-3D-Driveguard/td-p/307892

 http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-systems-and/HP-3D-DriveGuard-Needed-or-Recommended-f...

 http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Operating-systems-and-software/Envy-17-and-HP-3D-Driveguard/td-p/307892

[Jirrick]

Thx for that links,but neither of them helped me. :-(

I guess the best I can do is wait until monday and I will try how official support will respond to my demand.

However, it's a pity that very good idea of hdd protection is messed up by lack of settings availible for user.

[HaggisCat]

Sorry, but I knew there was nothing in the links that would help. I just attached them to let you know that other things have been tried and that I have tried.

 Good luck with HP.

[Jirrick]

well, business support isn't able to solve SW problems, please contact someone else (but don't know who). I was afraid of that. maybe I just start spaming every HP support email adess I found, don't see any other solution :-(

I heard that SW support is far far worse than HW (which worked for me when I was in trouble as I have 4yNBD) and I can just agree on this statement.