Head parking on my laptop's hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jan Lenoch
  • Start date Start date
J

Jan Lenoch

Hello,

Does anyone know about a way how to prevent my laptop's harddisk from
parking its head during operation? I've purchased a new Seagate drive
(ST94811A) and it parks its heads after a few seconds of inactivity.
Everytime windows need data from disk, the head must be retracted to its
operational position and this causes long system laggs and mouse cursor
stammerings.
I've searched the net but didn't find a solution. The manual says there is
some ATA command which could possibly disable the inactivity timeout, but
there is no utility program for sending this ATA command (neither on
seagate.com nor anywhere on internet).

Thanks for any advice
 
Hello,

Does anyone know about a way how to prevent my laptop's harddisk from
parking its head during operation? I've purchased a new Seagate drive
(ST94811A) and it parks its heads after a few seconds of inactivity.
Everytime windows need data from disk, the head must be retracted to its
operational position and this causes long system laggs and mouse cursor
stammerings.
I've searched the net but didn't find a solution. The manual says there is
some ATA command which could possibly disable the inactivity timeout, but
there is no utility program for sending this ATA command (neither on
seagate.com nor anywhere on internet).

Thanks for any advice
Click to expand...


Are youi confusing head parking with drive spin-down ? Look
in ControlPanel/Power Management and see what the settings are.
 
Al Dykes said:
Are youi confusing head parking with drive spin-down ? Look
in ControlPanel/Power Management and see what the settings are.
Click to expand...

No, I'm talking about head parking. Spin-down is a different thing, I know
:-).
 
i remember 'head parking' from old scsi days (on ataris!!) i didn't realise
it was an issue for non-scsi drives

are you sure it's parking the head? could it be another issue?

jim

Jan Lenoch said:
Al Dykes said:
Are youi confusing head parking with drive spin-down ? Look
in ControlPanel/Power Management and see what the settings are.
Click to expand...

No, I'm talking about head parking. Spin-down is a different thing, I know
:-).
Click to expand...
 
i remember 'head parking' from old scsi days (on ataris!!) i didn't realise
it was an issue for non-scsi drives

are you sure it's parking the head? could it be another issue?

jim
Click to expand...

How do you know the heads are being parked, and how long does it take
to reload the heads ? I can't imagine it takes as much as a second,
but I never saw a spec for it.


I think I've read that 2.5 inch disks may do this as a way to make
head crashes less likely in a laptop.
 
jim harris said:
i remember 'head parking' from old scsi days (on ataris!!) i didn't realise
it was an issue for non-scsi drives
Click to expand...

Of course it was.
SCSI is an interface standard and has nothing to do with the mechanics.
Parking the heads was necessary on drives that didn't autopark.
Don't confuse head parking with SCSI drive spindown (stop unit) which
of course also parks the heads before spindown.
All it did was bring the heads over (seek to) the parking zone before one
shuts the power off.

Nowadays some drives park the heads as part of an idle mode that fits
between idle and standby mode and drop the spinrate to conserve energy
but in so doing can quickly react to a wake-up. Actually, the heads are
parked on a ramp *because* of the reduced spinrate.
are you sure it's parking the head? could it be another issue?
Click to expand...

It still would be a similar issue.
jim
Click to expand...
 
Jan Lenoch said:
Hello,

Does anyone know about a way how to prevent my laptop's harddisk from
parking its head during operation? I've purchased a new Seagate drive
(ST94811A) and it parks its heads after a few seconds of inactivity.
Everytime windows need data from disk, the head must be retracted to its
operational position and this causes long system laggs and mouse cursor
stammerings.
Click to expand...

Jan,

Are you referring to an almost constant drive movement/click sound that
occurs when the drive is sitting idle? And sometimes occurs again, and
again, and again, and etc....

Regards,
Dave
 
Folkert Rienstra said:
Of course it was.
SCSI is an interface standard and has nothing to do with the mechanics.
Parking the heads was necessary on drives that didn't autopark.
Don't confuse head parking with SCSI drive spindown (stop unit) which
of course also parks the heads before spindown.
All it did was bring the heads over (seek to) the parking zone before one
shuts the power off.

Nowadays some drives park the heads as part of an idle mode that fits
between idle and standby mode and drop the spinrate to conserve energy
but in so doing can quickly react to a wake-up. Actually, the heads are
parked on a ramp *because* of the reduced spinrate.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's it. Except that my disk does not reduce the spinrate. It only
parks the disk (only as a shock protection).
are you sure it's parking the head? could it be another issue?
Click to expand...

It still would be a similar issue.
Click to expand...
 
David Baxter said:
Jan,

Are you referring to an almost constant drive movement/click sound that
occurs when the drive is sitting idle? And sometimes occurs again, and
again, and again, and etc....
Click to expand...

Hi David,

What you've described looks alike. As I found out in the manual, the drive
has several modes:
[1] Active mode (heads are tracking, spindle rotating, buffer enabled),
[2] Idle, performance mode (heads are somewhere on disc, spindle rotating,
buffer enabled),
[3] Idle, active (heads floating on the rim of the disc, spindle rotating,
buffer disabled),
[4] Idle, low power (heads parked on ramp, spindle rotating, buffer
disabled),
[5] Standby (heads parked on ramp, spindle stopped, buffer disabled)

It's interesting that there are two different timeouts: the first one is for
the "Idle, active" mode (maybe 0,1 sec. and it sounds like normal short disk
tick) and the second one is for the "Idle, low power" mode (approx 2 seconds
and this sounds very loud and it for a much longer time).

What you have described, can also be a S.M.A.R.T. drive activity (it
sometimes occurs because the drive monitors itself constantly). That's why
sometimes the drive produces some clicking even though the LED diode doesn't
blink.

Sorry for my english :)
Regards,
Jan
 
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