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Does Hitachi 7k500 500GB 7200 RPM drive have bead parking?
- Thread starter SDAVE
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All drives park their heads when spun down. I do not believe that drive has it's own, built-in SMS so I'd leave the MBP one turned on.
Hmm it looks like this drive does have a motion sensor. I just disabled it from the Terminal and the clicking went away.
I emailed Hitachi to see if this drive does have a motion sensor. The answer might help others here as well.
For now, I don't mind the idle noise. It's pretty timid. However, the 5400 RPM drive (again, Hitachi) was very quiet.
I emailed Hitachi to see if this drive does have a motion sensor. The answer might help others here as well.
For now, I don't mind the idle noise. It's pretty timid. However, the 5400 RPM drive (again, Hitachi) was very quiet.
Interesting info. I am thinking of buying one of these after Christmas and the seller I was looking at said no sensor. It's always useful to get the real info!
Care to post the command you used to disable it?
Care to post the command you used to disable it?
Update for anyone with this drive:
1. Download Feature Tool and make a bootable cd.
2. Put your Hitachi drive in any PC with SATA, then boot from the CD
3. Under Advanced Power Features, it is set to low power management (middle setting) by default. So put the slider all the way to the maximum performance (which is 254).
4. Click ok then let it save the setting to the drives firmware.
5. Shut down your PC and put the drive back into your laptop.
6. Voila! The idle clicking noise is now gone!
I know that there is an application that can do this from OS X, but it's better to have done this on the drive itself. Much easier to manage and it will work 100% of the time.
Downside? You need a PC to do this, but it takes no longer than 10 minutes. Also since power management is now off, the drive will eat a bit of the battery (I don't mind it, I'm always running on power most of the time).
I believe that the people who were also having problems with the Seagate 7,200 drives making clicking noise (drive head parking) had a similar problem. Seagate doesn't have these tools like Hitachi does for their drives, so customers were stuck with the drives click-n-clunk routine.
So anyways, hope this helps others. This drive is so speedy that it doesn't even warrant me to get an SSD. Maybe a few years down the line when the price is right.
You can't get better than this upgrade right now. My old stock 5400 RPM drive was really slow. This drive flies like butter. Now that the clicking noise is gone, all I hear is a very slight hum noise (drive is always spinning). It's almost inaudible.
I am, once again, not sure why these drive manufacturers do this or OS X does not take care of this automatically. People who aren't computer savvy wouldn't be able to do this. It seems that the Apple stock drives already have power management off by default in the firmware of the drives.
1. Download Feature Tool and make a bootable cd.
2. Put your Hitachi drive in any PC with SATA, then boot from the CD
3. Under Advanced Power Features, it is set to low power management (middle setting) by default. So put the slider all the way to the maximum performance (which is 254).
4. Click ok then let it save the setting to the drives firmware.
5. Shut down your PC and put the drive back into your laptop.
6. Voila! The idle clicking noise is now gone!
I know that there is an application that can do this from OS X, but it's better to have done this on the drive itself. Much easier to manage and it will work 100% of the time.
Downside? You need a PC to do this, but it takes no longer than 10 minutes. Also since power management is now off, the drive will eat a bit of the battery (I don't mind it, I'm always running on power most of the time).
I believe that the people who were also having problems with the Seagate 7,200 drives making clicking noise (drive head parking) had a similar problem. Seagate doesn't have these tools like Hitachi does for their drives, so customers were stuck with the drives click-n-clunk routine.
So anyways, hope this helps others. This drive is so speedy that it doesn't even warrant me to get an SSD. Maybe a few years down the line when the price is right.
You can't get better than this upgrade right now. My old stock 5400 RPM drive was really slow. This drive flies like butter. Now that the clicking noise is gone, all I hear is a very slight hum noise (drive is always spinning). It's almost inaudible.
I am, once again, not sure why these drive manufacturers do this or OS X does not take care of this automatically. People who aren't computer savvy wouldn't be able to do this. It seems that the Apple stock drives already have power management off by default in the firmware of the drives.
Hitachi reps are idiots. I called them and it seems that they don't even know that their feature tool has features to disable power management on the drive.
Anywho, it's working great. If anyone is on the fence with this drive, GET IT. It's the best drive out there right now. After this comes SSD's as far as speeds go, but that's a much more expensive option.
Anywho, it's working great. If anyone is on the fence with this drive, GET IT. It's the best drive out there right now. After this comes SSD's as far as speeds go, but that's a much more expensive option.
The tool is unbootable on any Mac, I'm not sure of the exact technical reason, it just won't boot. I had one of their drives die and was forced to use my friend's PC to "verify" it as part of Hitachi's standard procedures for RMA.
I agree that Hitachi had good performance from their drives. When I bought mine back in 2008 it was fast, quiet and spacious. However, I will never buy a drive from them again. I had a terrible experience with their customer service and should never have to jump through hoops to return a malfunctioning drive under warranty.
Because these type of tools always work on PC's and not on Macs, unfortunately.
By the way, Hitachi told me these drives do not have motion sensors...to anyone that was interested in that.
The noise...plus I noticed that everytime it parked when it was idle, it became a little slower when launching apps, etc.
If it's a hassle and you can live with the noise and slowness, then don't do it, but otherwise, it's worth it.
If it's a hassle and you can live with the noise and slowness, then don't do it, but otherwise, it's worth it.