Upgraded to WD2500BEVS Hard drive, makes clicking noise..

i've got a question (CRhysB already asked it above, but there was no answer): how do you check how many load/unload cycles your HD has?

Install fink and compile smartmontools. Then open a terminal an enter following command: smartctl -A /dev/disk0
You'll get a list with several information. In the last line should be the Load CycleCount.

Now I got some VERY weird results for you. I have a WD Scorpio 120GB, which clicked every 3-5sec, since I bought it a week ago.

At first, I compiled declunker with 4 sec interval (Intel), and everything was fine. Clicking gone and stuff..

Then as I had to re-install Mac OS X (10.5), because my windows installation on the same disk went terribly wrong and somehow I couldn't boot to OS X anymore (didn't find any formatted disks). Thank god I had some kind of back-ups.

Ironically I was at LanParties at the time, when I re-installed declunker, and I thought I had re-compiled it to 4 sec and Intel, and the sound would be gone (I couldn't hear it since there was so much noise). But now I got home, and heard the clicking. I hadn't compiled the declunker, and it was running at 5 sec and PowerPC.

And now to the weird thing. I stopped that process and uninstalled declunk. Suddenly the clicking is gone. I don't have any instances of declunk running now, and it doesn't click. It seems like that the PowerPC 5 sec declunk had been making that sound, which makes no sense. Anyway it just doesn't click anymore. I have to try wheter it clicks anymore even if I restart this Mac.

Oh, sorry to dissapoint, the clicking got back.

I too was annoyed by clicking noises after installing a WD2500BEVS in my MacBook, so I made a command-line utility to set the APM level from OS X. You can get it here:

http://mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm/

Please note that you do need to be comfortable with the command line to use this. No GUI or fancy installer yet, sorry! A LaunchDaemons .plist file is also supplied to make it run automatically on startup.

Source code is available. I hope this is helpful to those suffering from this issue - comments welcome.

Works for me! Thought the drive warms up now more than before. So there is some optimization needed! We need to test different APM levels with this to find the one that doesn't warm up so much (Fans are louder and right palm sweating now with max setting).

Thanks Bryce McKinlay, You probably saved us!

EDIT: typos

Message was edited by: Laiskumus

Thanks for making the tool Bryce! (I haven't tested it yet but it sounds promising.)

I also finally got word from Western Digital, they said:
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The firmware update on our site for clicking 2.5" drives on laptop computers is an old issue that our very first 2.5" IDE drives had, it does not affect SATA drives on MACs. This is a new issue that we have just begun working on now. I hope we will release some kind of firmware update for a MAC for this new issue soon. I will keep you informed.
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It ain't much, but I am glad they are actually working on it now and I hope to get a fix soon...

Now that you mention it, my WD2500BEVS does seem to get a little warmer when set to "max performance" also. I think that is a small price to pay for silence, though!

Unfortunately the WD drive seems to interpret any APM level other than min and max as "default", and the clicking comes back, so I'm not sure much more tuning can really be done.

Glad to hear that WD have acknowledged the issue.

My external drive now clunks too, but only when attached to my Macbook. It appears that Apple released a firmware update for Macbooks that tell all attached drives to manage power aggressively.

Is there any way to get hdapm or declunker to work on my external hard drive, which is a WD MyBook via FW400?

Thx for the tool but at least for my Samsung drive it doesnt work...

disk0: SAMSUNG HM160HC
Setting APM level to 0x80: FAILED: APM not supported

Tried every other option too; none worked... I know the drive supports APM but what is the issue?

Great Bryce! It's working for me.
I'm happy to see that you have published the source. I want to take a look at it 🙂

François, I received a similar response from WD, seems that we are making some noise...

It could be that not all 2.5" drives support the "APM Level" command. Although it is standardized as part of the ATA specification, I believe it is optional.

Is anyone getting the "APM not supported" error on a drive where the APM level can be set successfully under Windows or Linux?

Is there any way to get hdapm or declunker to work on my external hard drive,
which is a WD MyBook via FW400?

HDrive Awake program works the same as declunk -- it writes a small file to your drive every few seconds. I use it to keep my external FW400 drive from falling asleep.

At least my Samsung drive says "state unknown" under Linux with hdparm... can't tell what windows thinks ~> powerbook :/

Thank you for the tool! So far it seems to be working just great with my 200GB Hitachi 7200rpm drive!