hdapm fails with 10.6.8 update

Yes, I'm seeing this too.

Me too. Really bugs me that hdapm is necessary in the first place to stop the system from loading and unloading the hard disk every 15 seconds. hdapm was working well with 10.6.7. Have a western digital 750 GB (WDC WD 7500 BPVT). Why can't i just set this in the preferences to stop the system from doing this??

the reason is because this is an issue of western digital's firmware. what i dont understand is why the two companies cant work together to sort this out. unless of course this new system update has fixed the issue making hdapm unnessecary, which I doubt but havent checked yet.

It has not fixed the issue, have about 300 load cycles more according to SMART reporter in the about 3 hours i HAD 10.6.8. Now back to 10.6.7 and I think i will stick to this for a while. If it is wd or Apples fault, I can't really say, but i never read a warning from apple, that WD drives show this behavior.

As I said, I think it is not acceptable, that hdapm is needed to make a mac work with WD hard drives.BTW, is it just WD or Hitachi drives, too?. This problem is known for such a long time, it needs to be adressed or Apple has the responsibility to warn its customers not buying western digital hard drives because of incompatibilities. Apple, can your hear me?

I agree it is a ridiculous situation.

However I don't think its Apple's fault. Apple can't control the drive because of the WD firmware that comes with it. How easy would it be for WD just to provide a software tool for mac users to switch of power saving in its drives? Thats seriously all we need.

People have contacted WD support about this and they generally just say to use the Hdapm utility even though its unsupported. Anyway as its doubtful that WD's engineers are going to help at all as they haven't now for ... years..., I'd love to see an update for Hdapm to help with this issue. Otherwise I'll have to abandon my WD drive and never buy from them again.

Apparently it's not just Western Digital. My 2009 MBP has a Fujitsu hard drive, and it has the same problem. Also, hdapm suddenly failed after updating to 10.6.8. Very frustrating. If I do a restore via Time Machine, will that restore everything to 10.6.7, or just my files and apps?

I'd had the same problem, but then i tried to run the command as "root" by entering

sudo hdapm disk0 max

Thanks for the tip, it works for me too. Now I have an inkling of what apple modified presumably for extra security. It still doesn't change the ridiculous fact that we must rely on this hack to get our drives to work. Many thanks.

For me this worked:

Move your hdapm.plist file from the LaunchAgents directory to /library/LaunchDaemons

Give root-privileges to hdapm.plist using: sudo chown root:wheel /libary/LaunchDaemons/hdapm.plist

It now runs successfully at start-up again.

Basically it comes down to this: in 10.6.8 you seem to need root-privileges to run hdapm successfully. When you run hdapm.plist from the LaunchAgent directory - where it is usually placed - it will run as root after login with the privileges of that specific account. If you place the plist in the /library/LaunchDaemons directory it will run at startup as root - before login - providing that the privileges for the plist are set correctly.

Great advice. Thanks!

Hi Folks. I'm the developer of hdapm.

I've just created a new installer package which sets the correct permissions on the plist file so that it works better with 10.6.8.

The new package is also much easier to install - please give it a try if you're still having issues.

You can get it at: http://mckinlay.net.nz/hdapm

Thank you! But unfortunately the install process fails on my machine.. 😕

Here's the Console entry: http://pastebin.com/Pykfn9s5

Any recommendations?

Nicely done. I had no problem with installation.

trrfx - looks like the preinstall script was causing a problem for some reason. I just uploaded a new version without it. Can you try it again?

Total success! 🙂 Thnx, for the quick reply.