Constant Spin Down/Up

[Fotek]

Hey Guys,

I have a 500Gb Western Digital Sata Caviar Green (Model Number: WD5000AACS) as my main drive. It keeps spinning down and up all the time even when using it especially when gaming. Driving me insane as the system freezes for a minimum 1 second until it spins back up and all is ok.

Having already set the power options to never sleep in the advanced settings the problem still exists. I disconnected everything apart from the 9600GT graphics card (no on-board) and drive to see if this was a power issue but still the same problem.

I am thinking it must be an issue with the drive itself and have contacted WD via email but awaiting there response.

Any help/advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Sumanji]

Hey dude,

I had the same issue with my 320GB Caviar (used as a storage drive). However it sorted itself when I went into the advanced power options and changed this setting:

The default was 20 mins I think, but I just set it to zero (which is "never"). But it sounds like you've already tried that? Maybe try running the WD diagnostics tool to see if it's an actual problem with the drive...

Su

 

[Fotek]

Thanks for the reply, yes i have already set that to Never but same problem. I am going to run a scan on the drive overnight see if there is a hardware issue.

 

[james.miller]

my 1TB WD green does the same thing. never did get round to throwing the piece of crap in the bin and replacing it

 

[EGuitarStar]

Also check your BIOS power management settings. Some BIOS' have features for power saving and turning off the HDD is often one of them.

 

[AbsenceJam]

No point emailing WD, they're hopeless, just RMA if you think it's dodgy (try inanother machine).

 

[Fotek]

Also check your BIOS power management settings. Some BIOS' have features for power saving and turning off the HDD is often one of them.

I checked that before (MSI Mobo) but there is no option for it. Ill stick my noisy IDE old drive back in then seeing as it seems to be a fairly common problem, upgrade my system in couple of months anyway.

Thanks.

 

[Sumanji]

Mate, in the picture I posted do you see where it says "Balanced [Active]" near the top? Make sure the profile which you changed is the one which is active - change it in all 3 default profiles to be sure!

I made this mistake the first time, as I changed it in High Performance, but Windows annoyingly reverted back to Balanced. So I just set up Balanced with all my 24/7 settings and saved it

Su

 

[Fotek]

Mate, in the picture I posted do you see where it says "Balanced [Active]" near the top? Make sure the profile which you changed is the one which is active - change it in all 3 default profiles to be sure!

I made this mistake the first time, as I changed it in High Performance, but Windows annoyingly reverted back to Balanced. So I just set up Balanced with all my 24/7 settings and saved it

Su

The high performance was active and selected but i changed them all to be the same like you said. Don't think it has really done anything different but i have moved some of my games over to my external USB drive and ran them from there, much better.

Can still hear the drive spinning back up but there is not so much noticeable stutter.