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WD 640GB Blue HDD in optibay of MBP... couple questions

M

millerb7

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 9, 2010
870
153
Okay, first off, I'm spoiled as all get out due to the SSD. SUPER silent. Ran it solo for about 2-3 weeks.

I have recently (past week or two) added a WD 640GB HDD into the optibay slot. It's rather noisy. It sounds like it's spinning up and down almost constantly and I can hear slight clicking noises from it as it's accessing data.

The spin up/downs and clicking are almost constant all the time.

I know there are a few threads on it, none seem very definite though. I'm assuming there is nothing wrong with it as I have run disk repair via disk utility and I have run hardware tests on it via apples hardware tests on their discs. I'm having no issues with the drive functioning weird at all either.

I have heard some folks say theirs are completely silent, others say load as a freight train. Curious if it's just luck of the draw? Should I RMA it and hope for a more silent one?

This drive is currently my home folder for my SSD so because of that reason it's accessed almost constantly while I'm no my machine. Anything that would have to do with anything in the home folder. So I know it'll be spinning up/down like crazy and clicking as accessing, just wasn't sure what's considered "to much".

Anyways, very vague questions, and super subjective, just curious some thoughts.
 
I used to have a WD 250GB blue that clicked a lot annoyingly. Spin up/down was never an issue and I never noticed it. But the clicking thing I did.. never RMA'd it though and now I stuck it in my XBox360 and don't notice the clicking anymore though. So yeah sorry I didn't answer much for you.. as for my current Seagate 250GB XT, it doesn't click, but occasionally it makes this quiet high pitched whurrr sound really briefly, unsure what that is though haha.

btw I have my home folder set up exactly as you have it with my optibay hdd
 
aznguyen316 said:
I used to have a WD 250GB blue that clicked a lot annoyingly. Spin up/down was never an issue and I never noticed it. But the clicking thing I did.. never RMA'd it though and now I stuck it in my XBox360 and don't notice the clicking anymore though. So yeah sorry I didn't answer much for you.. as for my current Seagate 250GB XT, it doesn't click, but occasionally it makes this quiet high pitched whurrr sound really briefly, unsure what that is though haha.

btw I have my home folder set up exactly as you have it with my optibay hdd
Click to expand...

Yeah I only notice it while I'm in bed at night. Like I said I think the drive is functioning perfectly fine after all my testing on it.... I "might" consider doing an RMA on it if for some reason it gets more annoying. Guess the world of SSD's just spoiled me ;)
 
One note on this - you may want to swap the SSD and the HD, as the standard drive bay is shock-mounted and designed to reduce mechanical noise. Unless your Optibay is a lot fancier than mine, there's nothing similar there.
 
al2o3cr said:
One note on this - you may want to swap the SSD and the HD, as the standard drive bay is shock-mounted and designed to reduce mechanical noise. Unless your Optibay is a lot fancier than mine, there's nothing similar there.
Click to expand...

The optibay has problems that can arise if used as the boot drive...
 
hadpm

I think I had that same drive in my MacBook Pro 17. The clicking is from the drive power management conflicting with Mac OS X. You can use a utility called hdapm to control power management.

http://mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm/

In the end, I exchanged the drive for a Hitachi 500GB 7200 RPM. I used their Feature Tool on a PC to set the power management in firmware.
 
I just recently installed an SSD in my macbook, and then put my WD 640GB blue drive into my optibay as well. I too was frustrated by the clicking and spin up/down. Then a few days later my drive got really, really slow. I ran Smart Utility and it said the drive was failing with a bunch of pending bad sectors. I RMA'd it and am waiting for a replacement, but I don't think I'm going to put it back in the Optibay (I put the stock 320GB apple drive in there instead). Good luck!
 
segfault66 said:
I think I had that same drive in my MacBook Pro 17. The clicking is from the drive power management conflicting with Mac OS X. You can use a utility called hdapm to control power management.

http://mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm/

In the end, I exchanged the drive for a Hitachi 500GB 7200 RPM. I used their Feature Tool on a PC to set the power management in firmware.
Click to expand...

I'm going to be doing this I believe with my WD drive and see if I notice a diff... what exactly did you set?
 
Just an update.

I did the hdapm and it worked like a charm. I played around with all the settings from 1(min)-254(max) to see what worked the best.

The higher you go the less click noise you hear, but for me to get rid of the click noise 110% I had to go to max by typing:

hdapm disk0 max

But, works like a charm. I have noticed ZERO loss of battery, it honestly seems like it went up about 35 minutes.... only thing I can think of was the HDD spinning down and spinning up literally EVERY 15 seconds was using more battery than keeping it spinning.

Anyways, I'm please.... keeps settings thru restarts etc.
 
millerb7 said:
Just an update.

I did the hdapm and it worked like a charm. I played around with all the settings from 1(min)-254(max) to see what worked the best.

The higher you go the less click noise you hear, but for me to get rid of the click noise 110% I had to go to max by typing:

hdapm disk0 max

But, works like a charm. I have noticed ZERO loss of battery, it honestly seems like it went up about 35 minutes.... only thing I can think of was the HDD spinning down and spinning up literally EVERY 15 seconds was using more battery than keeping it spinning.

Anyways, I'm please.... keeps settings thru restarts etc.
Click to expand...

Your welcome for the step by step :)
 
tjb1 said:
Your welcome for the step by step :)
Click to expand...

Next we need to figure out why mine doesn't appear in console like we were talking last night in IRC.

Maybe take a screen shot of yours in your console so I know exactly what I'm looking for.

It seems to be taking effect on start-up but I cannot find it saying it's being run in console for the life of me.

See you in IRC tonight! It's a date!

<3
 
millerb7 said:
Next we need to figure out why mine doesn't appear in console like we were talking last night in IRC.

Maybe take a screen shot of yours in your console so I know exactly what I'm looking for.

It seems to be taking effect on start-up but I cannot find it saying it's being run in console for the life of me.

See you in IRC tonight! It's a date!

<3
Click to expand...

Mine doesn't appear in the console either :(
 
creeman said:
Mine doesn't appear in the console either :(
Click to expand...

Does your hdapm stay in effect thru a restart though, mine appears to be fine after restarts though.

Also, my next step, is to see if my machine will sleep at all with hdapm set to 'max'. It seems the HDD never spins down at all so not sure the machine will sleep or not... testing that tonight.

Unrelated: Also my SSD with 310xxxx firmware (the older firmware) arrived today, which eliminates the sleep/hibernate issue.
 
millerb7 said:
Does your hdapm stay in effect thru a restart though, mine appears to be fine after restarts though.

Also, my next step, is to see if my machine will sleep at all with hdapm set to 'max'. It seems the HDD never spins down at all so not sure the machine will sleep or not... testing that tonight.

Unrelated: Also my SSD with 310xxxx firmware (the older firmware) arrived today, which eliminates the sleep/hibernate issue.
Click to expand...

I bet its because its affecting the optibay...and im getting tired of you getting ssds, mines still at college.
 
millerb7 said:
Does your hdapm stay in effect thru a restart though, mine appears to be fine after restarts though.

Also, my next step, is to see if my machine will sleep at all with hdapm set to 'max'. It seems the HDD never spins down at all so not sure the machine will sleep or not... testing that tonight.

Unrelated: Also my SSD with 310xxxx firmware (the older firmware) arrived today, which eliminates the sleep/hibernate issue.
Click to expand...

It doesnt seem to be working at all. Doesnt show up in the console and I can still hear the HDD spinning down and spinning up. Changed in the plist to use disk1 because I want it to work on the optibay drive.
 
Something's bugging me too... not on the 640GB, but on a new 500GB Scorpio Blue in the MacBookPro 15" model 3.1 (early 2008).

Getting clicks like many others, hdapm (set at max) works flawlessly, fixing permissions/ownership make it launch easily at startup. Clicks are gone BUT on battery the MacBook Pro lasts definitely less than before.

Anybody tried to disable the Sudden Motion Sensor on the MBP yet? I've read that it might be an option.

Last option... ditch the Scorpio Blue and buy a Fujitsu... ?
 
^^ I would say ditch Scorpio Blue if possible. A year and a half ago I also replaced my MBP (early 2008, 4.1) stock drive with a 500 GB Scorpio Blue and have, like lots of other users, experienced constant clicking and all that crap. I settled with HDAPM, which works like a charm, but deep down I'm still pissed over this because it shouldn't be like this.

In any case, I'm never buying a WD internal HDD again.
 
Thanks Jon, I agree with you about the advise of not purchasing again an internal WD drive. Maybe it's not a lemon, but it still worries me, especially since I've read about similar problems on Linux forums.

By the way, I finally managed to use Wdidle3 instead of hdapm. It seems to work quite well. I feel more comfortable to use a tool that was actually built by WD rather than hdapm. Although this doesn't increases my trust in WD...
 
gillux said:
Thanks Jon, I agree with you about the advise of not purchasing again an internal WD drive. Maybe it's not a lemon, but it still worries me, especially since I've read about similar problems on Linux forums.

By the way, I finally managed to use Wdidle3 instead of hdapm. It seems to work quite well. I feel more comfortable to use a tool that was actually built by WD rather than hdapm. Although this doesn't increases my trust in WD...
Click to expand...

Oh, what exactly is Wdidle3? First time I heard of it...
 
tjb1 said:
The optibay has problems that can arise if used as the boot drive...
Click to expand...

Interesting comment. Can you further explain? I have multiple problems (clicks + )... that the drive became more noisy in the optibay. I was thinking of switching.
 
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