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I have WD MyPassport 2TB drive and I hear head being parked every few minutes when I'm listening to mp3 music from the drive for example... I checked with PassMark DiskCheckup SMART monitoring utility and the attribute C1 (Load Cycle Count) is at 833 and I've only had the drive for about 10 days. When I hear the parking click, I can verify the count going up by one. My other 1TB drive which is 1 year old and was used a lot has 7000 cycles. So this new one obviously is parking more.
Why is the head being parked when the drive is being accessed? Is this the same as the sleep timer on the drive that I can set with WD Drive Utility? I had this number set to 45 minutes, but the parking occurred much more frequently. Head being parked does not turn the drive down (it's still spinning) and there is no delay when trying to access the drive again. Please help me understand how this works and how can I reduce the number of times head gets parked during the day.
thank you! david
davidhq
Posted 2013-06-21T12:31:16.820
Reputation: 255
Is it one of those "green" drives?
– Karan – 2013-06-22T02:08:31.070no, it's the external WD My Passport
– davidhq – 2013-06-22T11:31:39.897Yeah, but what's the actual hard drive inside? – Karan – 2013-06-22T16:58:48.120
Oh... don't know! How can I find out? I thought green drive series were not external. – davidhq – 2013-06-22T20:03:30.527
Doesn't PassMark DiskCheckup tell you the model number of the HDD inside? Otherwise try CrystalDiskInfo. External drives are most often nothing but internal drives in a casing/enclosure. – Karan – 2013-06-22T20:45:28.067
It's WD20NMVW-11W68S0 ... so it's not the same as "WD20EARS-00MVWB0" ('green' drive) – davidhq – 2013-06-22T21:11:23.813
Obviously the WD20EARS is not the only green drive available from WD. The WD20NMVW seems to be custom made for the Passport though, and cannot even be removed from the casing. – Karan – 2013-06-22T23:28:22.803
yes, I noticed that the casing cannot be opened... – davidhq – 2013-06-23T08:07:57.777
So can I increase the idle timer setting with that DOS utility? I would like to set it at least to couple of minutes... not a few seconds as it is now – davidhq – 2013-06-25T14:11:21.667
Check if the utility supports your HDD, although I doubt it. If it doesn't then don't risk using it. – Karan – 2013-06-25T15:48:56.970