Feature Tool makes my Hitachi HDD quiet as dead

[hzxu]

Hi, recently I upgraded the HDD of my macbook pro 13"(2009) to a Hitachi 7200RPM 500GB(7K500), it generates clicking noise and the Load_Cycle_Count attribute increases too fast, which has a 600000 limit. I searched on the forum, and saw many people have the same problem, someone suggests LCC is not spin-up/spin-down but Start_Stop_Count is, which is NOT true for laptop, it is only true for desktop with Windows which do not care about power saving so the HDD seldom parks its head.

Today I went to my friends house who has a desktop PC which support SATA HDD, so I plugged my 2.5" HDD in straight away, and booted from Hitachi's Feature Tool(you can google it and find the address), then I was able to adjust the APM level. Here are two photos:

I made it 192, which is the lowest value within Active idle range as I usually use my MBP as a desktop replacement, so battery is not an issue.

Hope this can help people with Hitachi HDD who are annoyed by the clicking noise and worried about the shortened life of HDD.

 

[DaftZombie]

Awesome, I'm planning on grabbing one of those sometime soon and this will be nice. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Drudkh]

Pardon me, what difference does it make between 191 and 192 as shown in your photos?

 

[Timur]

You an also install this on OS X, which turns power-management of any HD to any value you like from within OS X (needs to run at every reboot):

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

 

[hzxu]

Pardon me, what difference does it make between 191 and 192 as shown in your photos?

As you can see in the "Value Description", from 0-127, the HDD is in RPM standby mode, I think it means HDD can stay in idle as soon as possible, in order to make RPM low, from 128-191, HDD is in lower Power idle, which means HDD move the head away from disk as soon as there is no read/write activity, in order to save power and ensure data integrity, and 128(the lowest value in this range) is commonly used by laptop. From 192, the HDD is in active idle range, which means it will park the head less often, to increase performance(because there is no need to take time to put head to disk when read/write), but this consumes more power than lower values. For desktop which does not care about power saving, higher values are used.

 

[hzxu]

You an also install this on OS X, which turns power-management of any HD to any value you like from within OS X (needs to run at every reboot):

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

Yes I tried it, and it works well after start-up, but does not work when resume from sleep.