t61 - How to stop hard disk going to sleep mode?

[sgogula]

Hi,

I recently replaced my internal hard disk (80GB 5200rpm) with Western Digital 320GB 7200 hard disk. When I work on heavy applications, hard disk is going into sleep mode.

Is there any way to stop hard disk going into sleep mode? I checked the power option and sleep mode is set to 'never'. My system never goes into sleep mode with 80GB hard disk.

I tested with seagate 250GB 7200 rpm internal hard disk and its the same issue, system goes into sleep modes when working on heavy applications like Adobe CS3.

Thanks for looking

[mgo]

Hi,

I recently replaced my internal hard disk (80GB 5200rpm) with Western Digital 320GB 7200 hard disk. When I work on heavy applications, hard disk is going into sleep mode.

Is there any way to stop hard disk going into sleep mode? I checked the power option and sleep mode is set to 'never'. My system never goes into sleep mode with 80GB hard disk.

I tested with seagate 250GB 7200 rpm internal hard disk and its the same issue, system goes into sleep modes when working on heavy applications like Adobe CS3.

Thanks for looking

In power management look for "advanced" and then HDD. Set hard drive "turn off hard disk" to never.

[sgogula]

'turn off hard disk' is already set to 'never'. I am just wondering what could be the other things which is causing my hard disk going into sleep mode.

Hard disk turns off suddenly, sometimes after few seconds and sometimes after using the laptop for few hours.

[excelsior]

I am having the same problem on my T61. The hard disk in the ultrabay is constantly spinning down after only a minutes, or even a few seconds of non-use.

I tested the same hdd and caddy in a T60p and this symptom does not occur. It is particular to this T61 and the OS on this machine.

My power manager settings are all set to "never" - both in the Windows 7 and Lenovo power settings interface. There are no jumpers set on the hard drive either (a 1TB WD Blue drive).

Anyone have other ideas to track down this issue?

[Cigarguy]

If your HDD firmware is set to sleep after x amount of time there's not much you can do to correct it. For most people this is a desirable feature for some it's not.

[ac12]

I would contact WD tech support and ask them.
It's their drive.

[excelsior]

I've just tested the HDD in a T60p and T60, and it does not spin down.
(The HDD in question here in this thread is a 2nd HDD in an ultrabay caddy.)

My T61 has the Middleton BIOS applied, and I'm now suspecting that this BIOS may have issues with the Windows power management.

I looked in the BIOS setup screen but did not find any relevant settings that could be causing the problem.