Taming my laptop's "Load Cycle Count" ...?

[Xenomorph]

I'll try to keep this short.

I purchased a new hard drive for my ThinkPad T43.

Every minute the drive wasn't in use, I noticed a click. Kind of like the drive was going bad. This was a new drive though. Made in 2008. It's been formatted and under heavy usage. If it was going bad, it would have died already I thought.

I Googled drive clicking issues.
I found this page:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... e_clicking

It mentioned that each drive click was the heads being parked by the drive. And with each click the "Load_Cycle_Count" increased by 1.

So I ran "smartctl -a hda", and sure enough, after each click, "Load_Cycle_Count" went up by 1.

I ran "hdparm -B 255 hda" to disable power management, and it hasn't clicked since.

I haven't used the laptop drive much, but its load cycle count is 10 times that of a Desktop drive I've been using non stop for a year.

If the ThinkPad is rebooted, sleeps or hibernates, the drive's power management kicks back in, and the clicks and Load_Cycle_Count will start back up again.

ThinkPad T43
Fujitsu MHV2120AH (120 Gig IDE)

This happens under Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. All drivers and IBM/Lenovo software up to date. All power-saving features disabled.

Is there a more permanent way to disable the drive's built-in power management? Or at least not make it click every minute? I use TP Fan Control (with the fan at a constant "2"), so now the drive clicking is the loudest thing in the system.

I saw a thread here where someone mentions the issue:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=63413

And one here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=805570

Most of the stuff I've seen are from people using Linux. Since getting my T43, Windows 7 has been my primary OS on it.

Any suggestions?

[Xenomorph]

I just found a 35+ page thread on the same thing:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=168425

It seems NHC (Notebook Hardware Control) may be the way to go.

It lets you set Power Management on the drive to 254, and it keeps it that way even after Sleep.

It looks like it costs $20 to purchase the "Pro" version that runs as a system service. Seems pretty cheap to keep my drive from dying after a year.


I just found this link also:

http://www.dougitdesign.com/blogs/blog_ ... hdapm.html

[Xenomorph]

Ok, I think I got this solved on my system. ^_^

I've posted this on other forums as well.

Right now, I'm using the quietHDD program and Microsoft's service-installer thing (turn any EXE into a service).

Here is a quick and dirty hack:

1) Download http://xenomorph.net/files/hdd_click/quietHDD_Files.zip
(it has quietHDD.exe, a quietHDD config file for 254/255 for both acoustic and power management, and the Microsoft service-loader).

2) Extract the zip file to \Windows\System32
(I know, not the best idea, but services are ran with system32 as their path, and quietHDD is one of those programs that checks its current path for its config file).

3) Download http://xenomorph.net/files/hdd_click/qu ... ervice.zip
(registry file to set up the service).

4) Run the REG file in that zip to add the service, then Reboot.

On my T43 (32-bit, Windows 7), it seems to work perfectly. When the system reboots, quietHDD is loaded as a service, power management is disabled, and the hard drive no longer clicks.

quietHDD.exe takes up less than 1 Meg of memory.

This is an unofficial fix (these aren't my files), and I may take it down.

quietHDD site:
http://sites.google.com/site/quiethdd/