Upgraded to WD2500BEVS Hard drive, makes clicking noise..

I'm using HDAPM too, and from what I've seen it continues working when the power cord is unplugged. But, what's happening for me is that it doesn't work after a cold boot. So each time I boot up I open terminal, type "hdapm disk0 max" and it works again.

In this case just put your "hdapm disk0 max" command into /etc/rc.common just above the host configuration part at the end of the start script. This will set your harddrive to max performance during each startup from cold boot.

Thanks for the info, but when I try to save the file with that code in it, I says that I don't have sufficient write privileges. So I went to Get Info and gave myself Read/Write privilege, but it still didn't work. Do I have to be logged in as the root user to do this?

Also, I just want to make sure that I put the code in the right part of the file. Does this look right? (it's just the last part of the file):

"
##
# Generic action handler
##
RunService ()
{
case $1 in
start ) StartService ;;
stop ) StopService ;;
restart) RestartService ;;
* ) echo "$0: unknown argument: $1";;
esac
}

hdapm disk0 max

##########################
# Get host configuration #
##########################
. /etc/hostconfig
"

-Eric

Many thanks. My Seagate Momentus 7200RPM 200GB drive had clocked up 6000 cycles in a week. This utility appears to prevent it increasing. Only noticed a slight increase in drive temperature on the palm rest - but the decrease in clunking is great!

Thanks for the application, Bryce. It's nice to have some control over this drive.


What are others experiencing in terms of battery usage?

I have not actually measured the battery life on my MacBook Pro, but it seems to eat up the power quite a bit faster when in "max" mode. Of course, this is to be expected, but I was a bit surprised at how much of a difference it made.


I've been using 'max' mode when on AC power, and switching to '128' when on battery.

Hello,

Have you all tried removing the jumper from the drive? I just bought a 320GB WD Passport drive and removed the drive to put in my Macbook. The jumper is by default inserted to spin down the drive frequently to save power. Removing it solved my problems.

This is what I found about this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=221301
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/5646/satajumper25mh3.jpg

At least my bulk packeted drive did not come with any jumpers included, and I even checked, that there was no jumper inserted.

You probably had the jumper because you took the harddrive from the passport?

Sorry, this didn't help me.

EDIT: You said, that it would affect to the spindown frequency/power settings, that pic only talks about Reduced Power Spinup. Is there something I'm missing?

Message was edited by: Laiskumus

I am not afraid of using terminal, but just apparently too dumb to get this to work. I have a WD 250 scorpio drive in a 12"PB G4 running OS X10.5. I get remarks from terminal indicating that the fix won't take and still with the clunking. This is my 2nd WD 250 drive and I really don't want to pull it out again and send it back, if possible. Any solutions for the less technical amongst us?

Could someone kindly explain how to check your hard drive load count? on a Mac. I presume it requires a visit to the Terminal?

I have a WE2500BEVS-00UST0 installed in my MBP but have not noticed the clicking problem, but I hae had other problems with crashing and hangs and jsut completly reinstalled my OS hoping it will help. So far 2 days later it's better but will it last?

I found this to be helpful:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?p_faqid=1410&p_created=1138291119&p_sid=WUSSOm1j&p_accessibility=0&p_red irect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MjEzL DIxMyZwX3Byb2RzPSZwX2NhdHM9JnBfcHY9JnBfY3Y9JnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9c2VhcmNoX2ZubCZwX 3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PVdEMjUwMEJFVlMtMDBVU1QwIEp1bXBl&p_li=&ptopview=1

I went to westerndigital.com and did a search for WD2500BEVS-00UST0 Jumper and found the jumper on the left two pins runs in Reduced Power mode, on the right Spread Spectrum, Remove it for normal use.

hdadpm worked for me too - at the beginning. I don't know when it stopped working, maybe an apple update or something like that. When I try to start it in terminal (hdapm disk0 max, also tried this with sudo and some other options than max) it just says, that my Fujitsu MHW2120BH does not support APM. But I could swear it worked at the beginning!

Yes, use smartmontools (installation instructions below)

This is a terrible problem and we should be clamoring to our hard-disk manufacturers to ask them to fix it.

To find out if this problem effects you, do the following:

Somebody earlier suggested downloading fink, and then installing "smartmontools" that way.
But you don't have to download "fink" to do this. (fink is a huge installation and l'm not sure how well it is supported anymore -no offense to those who work on fink- I haven't looked at fink in a while.)

These next steps require you to log in as root and use a terminal. I tend to give verbose instructions. I hope that doesn't bother anyone.

You will have to install Xcode (another big installation, see below).

1) Install Xcode.
This should be included on your operating system DVD.
Or you can download it from
http://developer.apple.com/tools/download/

2) Go to:
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

3) Download the source-code-tarball at
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/download.html
Click on the "Second Option")
(You get an ad. The link to actually download anything is hard to find. It's in the upper-right corner)

4) You can unpack it either by double-clicking it, or by entering the command:
tar -f smartmontools-5.38.tar -xv
from the directory where the .tar file was downloaded to (probably ~/Downloads)

5) Enter the newly created directory. In the terminal enter:
cd smartmontools-5.38
(Of course, the number "5.38" may be different depending on the version you downloaded.)

6) This next step is probably optional (but I want to reproduce exactly what I did). Enter:
sudo mkdir /usr/local/sbin
sudo mkdir /usr/local/etc

7) Compile the program using the following commands:

./configure
make
sudo make install

8) Now, in the shell, enter:
/usr/local/sbin/smartctl -a /dev/disk0

This will print out a lot of information. Scroll to the line that says "193 Load CycleCount":
When I do this, I get:
193 Load CycleCount 0x0032 167 167 000 Old_age Always - 100113

That last number, (in my case 100113 !!) is the load cycle count. (I've had my hard drive about 4.5 months. Divided by the number of days I have been using my laptop, that's over 1000 cycles per day. It should not be anywhere near that high.

So please try this procedure on your apple laptop. If you are getting more than a hundred load cycles per day, please complain to your hard drive manufacturer about it. They need to fix this!

(Incidentally, I have been running ubuntu on this computer most of the time, so the high load-cycle-count doesn't appear to be related to OSX or leopard. It's the hardware manufacturer's fault.)

Here's what I found:
http://www.wdc.com/en/library/portable/2579-001116.pdf

That's interesting, but I am skeptical that this would be related to APM.
But I am curious, did anyone try changing the jumper settings, and did it have any effect?