[VarHyid]

Recently, I've got scammed by Seagate by buying a "desktop class" 7200rpm 3.5" 1 TB drive which, as it turns out, behaves like a notebook drive and every 5 seconds of inactivity, spins down the platter and parks the head. Since I wanted to store games on it, games glitch and behave weirdly because if nothing happens for 5 seconds and then the game needs to load a file, texture, sound effect or anything - it takes about 2 seconds for the drive to spin up and up-park the head which not only makes it useless for gaming, but also concerns me about decreased longevity - how long will a drive that spins up, down and parks the head 100+ times a day last?

Anyway, now I'm looking at one of these two Western Digital drives:

- WD Blue WD10EZEX 1TB
- WD Black WD2002FAEX 2TB

so if someone is absolutely sure whether either of them have this "advanced power management" system that powers down the drive every 5 seconds, please let me know as I really need a desktop-class drive that behaves like on and will NOT power down 100+ times a day while I'm using it.

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Hi VarHyid,

Did you try to find information about changing the Seagate HDD configuration? Can you post the exact model you have?

[SleepyDude]

Hi VarHyid,

Did you try to find information about changing the Seagate HDD configuration? Can you post the exact model you have?

[VarHyid]

Yes, I did. The model is ST1000DM003-9YN162 and there are multiple programs that can disable ACPI with just one click... however, all of them only do this for the duration of one session and next day I boot up my PC, the setting is back to how the drive wants it, that is - ACPI enabled and set to 5 seconds of inactivity before spin down and head parking.

I've contacted Seagate, had a long conversation and the bottom line is - even their latest firmware will not allow to disable this permanently.

That said, I may or may not get a replacement from them, refund from the store I bought it from or keep the drive for backups or, in case I would like to capture gameplay as a drive where FRAPS can dump hundreds of GBs of uncompressed footage before I edit it

Either way - I want and need another drive that simply does not have any ACPI in the first place and will not spin down every 5 seconds while I'm playing a game which, in most cases, doesn't even know how to react to a situation where it wants to read something and the drive went to sleep. In Metro: Last Light, some textures were missing after standing in one place for more than 5 secs and then moving on. In Saints Row: The Third, after entering a car and accelerating, it takes 2 seconds before I hear the engine sound and then the sound glitches and repeats because the game seems to load sound effects as it needs them.

In other words - I can't use it for gaming and don't want to be forced to use software that is going to change this setting on each boot so if you know if either of these two WD drives does this, please let me know because until recently I wouldn't even think that a drive sold as "desktop class" may do this and behave like a laptop super-power-saving-drive and when I Google these model numbers of the WD drives then I still can find information that apparently some people have problems with head parking, but it's not as much as when I Google my Seagate drive so maybe these are different problems, but I need to know if that's the case.

Edited by VarHyid, 17 July 2013 - 08:44 AM.

[SleepyDude]

Hi VarHyid,

I remember seen some configuration options on the Dos tools used to check the Hard Disk's health but if Seagate say its not possible I don't have other suggestions.

I found some programs that need to be running to stop the spin down but I don't know if they work for sure.

If I'm not mistaken most actual HDD's will do the same thing with more or less idle timeout (reference)...

[VarHyid]

Yes, HDPARM is what I've been looking for, too, but again - do I really have to think how to disable a feature that should never been there in the first place? It makes sense on a laptop, but not a desktop-class drive.

I've contacted WD and they've replied that all their drives have this and I'm just speechless :-( For decades, I've had drives that behave as they should and any power-management features could be set in the OS, but how dare these manufacturers implement something like this which ignores the power management settings in the OS? Let me guess - if the drive does 100+ spin-up/spin-down cycles a day, it'll die sooner so you'll have to buy a new one?

Does anyone know what models of WD drives from the Blue or Black series do NOT have this "feature"? How come I didn't even know about this? Is everybody who buys a new HDD OK with that? Even when you have your OS on that drive and every time you access any file, it must spin up before it reads it? I can't believe that this isn't big news and no one sees it as a HUGE issue.

[SleepyDude]

Yes, HDPARM is what I've been looking for, too, but again - do I really have to think how to disable a feature that should never been there in the first place? It makes sense on a laptop, but not a desktop-class drive.

I've contacted WD and they've replied that all their drives have this and I'm just speechless :-( For decades, I've had drives that behave as they should and any power-management features could be set in the OS, but how dare these manufacturers implement something like this which ignores the power management settings in the OS? Let me guess - if the drive does 100+ spin-up/spin-down cycles a day, it'll die sooner so you'll have to buy a new one?

Does anyone know what models of WD drives from the Blue or Black series do NOT have this "feature"? How come I didn't even know about this? Is everybody who buys a new HDD OK with that? Even when you have your OS on that drive and every time you access any file, it must spin up before it reads it? I can't believe that this isn't big news and no one sees it as a HUGE issue.

Does the HDPARM work for you? I found another simple program that supposedly does the same...

I'm guessing this probably was changed when they start build disk with Advanced Format because I remember this could be changed on older models.

[VarHyid]

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get HDPARM to work so far. I've used something called "Drive Power Manager" from here: http://www.hdtune.com/download.html but it's a trial and this will require to manually disable this every day I boot my PC.

If I try to run

hdparm -I hdb (which should display info about the drive... just to check if this even works)

using the command line (cmd) on my system (while being in the hdparm directory) it returns "permission denied". If I try to modify the predefined CMD files (so that it will affect hdb and not hda) and run it "as administrator", then is says that it doesn't recognize the command hdparm.

Another issue is - the pre-defined thing would set the power management to 254 or 255 while the "Drive Power Management" has a slider that only goes to 127 as "high performance" which raises the question - is it possible that this particular drive treats 127 as maximum and 255 would be damaging or is it just a fault of this program and when I un-check the "Enable box there, it also does 255 which shuts down ACPI (and I can confirm that this "Drive..." thingy does do this, of course until next boot.

I would really prefer to just get a 2 TB drive for games and maybe keep this one just for either backups or whenever I need large amounts of data for post-processing.

I still can't believe that even the WD Black series would do this (and no one's ranting about it properly), I did contact them again, hoping that the guy had no idea what he's talking about.

Edited by VarHyid, 17 July 2013 - 12:13 PM.

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

Check this one quietHDD.

Edit: I suspect all the manufacturers will do that to consume less power == save money.

Edited by SleepyDude, 17 July 2013 - 12:24 PM.

[VarHyid]

Thanks, will definitely check it out later today, but reg. "save money" - no, that's just to GAIN money by either selling more drives as they break too soon or by being able to put the ridiculous "this is a GREEN product" badge so that people who really think that saving these 8 W of power the drive consumes (which, based on how the efficiency of the PSU differs, will even be impossible to see on your electricity bill) will make the world a better place not even thinking about this for a moment and realizing that there's more energy and resources required to build a drive, which they will have to buy sooner than they normally would, than what they will "save" with this "green drive".

As I wrote somewhere else - there's a light bulb somewhere in the US working for MANY years while all our bulbs die in less than a year. How come? Well, if you'd buy just 4 bulbs that would last a lifetime, the manufacturer would bankrupt. Same principle here - they've found a way to increase sales by making drives work more than they normally would and try to convince people that this is great energy savings for them... but they will need to replace it sooner. Meanwhile, I would rather buy one good drive for many years and donate some money to a charity

[VarHyid]

Just checked quietHDD and unfortunately, it doesn't work at all Checked in SiSoft Sandra and disabling APM through it does nothing to my drive. I'm not even sure if it really tries to do this to the correct secondary drive and not my primary which doesn't have this APM feature so it's good.

Anyway, I'm just devastated How come everyone who buys hard-drives be completely fine with this and not outrage and make this big news. So we are now in a world where there's no way to buy a modern desktop-class HDD that will not spin-down every 5 seconds. You have got to be kidding me