Toshiba Portege M400 collaspsing (HD connector problem?)

Sounds like.

by R. Proffitt - 12/11/09 6:28 AM

In Reply to: Toshiba Portege M400 collaspsing (HD connector problem?) by shidiskas

Mechanical issues, bad boards. Costly to fix if you can't take care of the mechanical issue your self. If I saw it I might peg the repairs at about 600 to include a new main board and some plastic housing parts.
Bob

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HD Protection Utility was the problem

by proto-man - 11/13/11 7:49 AM

In Reply to: Toshiba Portege M400 collaspsing (HD connector problem?) by shidiskas

My problem:

My Toshiba M400 (PPM40C-1200TE) recently started to perform poorly, lagging, getting stuck, and occasionally randomly restarting. Other times, the screen would just black out, fan would blast, and the power light would blink orange regularly.
Although I didn't realize it at first, the restarts/blackouts would happen whenever I moved the laptop. Hmm, that's familiar cz whenever I moved the laptop before, the laptop would have for about 1 sec, but continue smoothly where it left off. This is due to Toshiba's HDD Protection (basically, the HD r/w head locks up whenever the laptop moves to prevent HD damage).

I'm guessing that recently, the sensor / accelerometer went bad and became oversensitive. This could explain the general lagginess (HDD keeps locks up), and the more severe restarts/blackouts.

Solution:

Start -> Programs -> Toshiba -> Utilities -> HDD Protection Utility: Disable

If you don't have the utility, you can grab it from the Toshiba drivers website.

- I've read about users having this issue even after reinstalling their OS. That probably wouldn't solve the problem because the HDD Protection mechanism is built into the hardware, and unless you disable it through the Toshiba utility, even reinstalling OS won't help.