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My hard drive semms to park its head after X minutes, and when I access it again it loads the head in a fraction of a second (causing a small beep),and causing disturbances to media streamed from it. Since I'm in a critical environment where I record sound, I wonder if I can totally disable this head parking function? The HDD in question is a Toshiba DT01ACA300 64MB 3TB.

I have tried: Disable APM and AMM, with no change. Normally run Windows 8, but the same problem seems to show under Linux on the same machine.

I could probably use something like KeepAliveHD ... but would prefer another solution. Also, having tried KeepAliveHD, it actually seems like it doesn't help. I can say why, maybe in some way the cash of the drive makes the drive not write the file directly, so that the drive can stay in standby mode?

PetaspeedBeaver
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2 Answers2

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Windows power settings don't affect the built-in head parking function of the hard drive. However, it does work to use hdparm's -S and -B options to disable it. This solution works, but hdparm has to be run again after each power cycle.

A side note: Using KeepAliveHD doesn't work. That program is supposed to keep the drive awake by writing a small text file to it every minute. Maybe it doesn't work because the file is too small and stored in the cache of the drive?

Peter Li
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PetaspeedBeaver
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This is for Windows 7, but should more or less apply completely to Windows 8.

Start menu > Power Options > Change Plan Settings > Change Advanced Power Settings > Hard Disk (second from the top) > Turn Off Disk After > type as many 9's as will fit, or whatever you want.

MarcusJ
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