Any HDD recommendations that don't "auto park"?

Hi, I'm looking for a new hard drive. I currently have a WD Scorpio Blue that came with my T410. It has an annoying issue with parking the heads every 8 seconds of being idle, and there is no way to disable it (I even tried their 'wdidle3' app). It severely affects performance when I'm gaming, or even causes DVDs to skip while I'm trying to watch a movie.
Apparently all WD HDDs have this "intellipark" feature. Can anyone recommend any decent HDDs without such features? I have my eye on the Samsung Spinpoint.
Thanks.

 

AFAIK, auto-park is a feature that is present in all current laptop drives. Its aim is to save power and reduce temperature. This feature is only disabled in server HDDs which should be on for 7/24.


--

 

if you constantly are downloading it'll never stop but it'll build up heat. there is no hdd out there that doesn't idle from time to time. other than that you have no other choice. sorry to tell you this

 

It seems that the WD scorpio blue (5400 rpm) is causing stuttering problems in games in the g73 with this disk (g73 with 7200rpm disk (seagate momentus) doesn´t have this problems related to HD)

 

Before, you could set the idle time in the operating system and the HDD would obey it, but WD's "intellipark" completely ignores it and arbitrarily parks its heads when it thinks it should. When I'm playing games, or even watching a DVD, suddenly they stutter and pause if the HDD needs to get accessed, and I have to wait until the HDD spins back up. It's very annoying.
I don't remember HDDs in the past ever having such an aggressive "power saving" feature. I could always set the OS to spin down the HDD after say 5 minutes, or 15, or whatever, and it would.

 

yeah hence get a 7200rpm one. i hate it when that happens. usually it would spin to load up then creating heat then play but it should stutter @ all when playing.

 

in the Lenovo power manager there should be an option to set the idle time for the hard drive.

 

WD SecurePark ignores the OS options for HD idle time.

 

lord_neno is right, I tried that and many other things. WD completely ignores anything I set.

 

I've found Notebook Hardware Control and other programs like this one are able to fully control (prevent) spin-downs:

Drive Power Manager

 

thanks! , I'll tell people who suffer from this problem with 5400rpm disk in g73 to try out this program

 

You could also try QuietHDD, I have found in the past it has worked wonders...........

 

Try to open up CrystalDiskInfo 3.8.0 and choose Function --> Advanced Feature --> AAM/APM Control and adjust it to your needs.

If that doesn't seem to work look at WD Support > Knowledge Base > WD Scorpio & AV-25 > WD Scorpio Blue on the right side under "Jumper Settings" click "more info" for your model then scroll down to "RPS Enabled". You may find that jumper setting useful. Sorry I meant that you may have that jumper installed already (enabled) causing the hiccups. Default is no jumpers.

 

Thanks for the suggestions but I'm looking for a new HDD, preferrably a 7200 RPM one. I'd rather not use software solutions to cover up an existing problem.
I checked and the jumpers are clear, so it's not that.
I'll probably give the Samsung a try.

 

My g73 has 2 seagate momentus 7200.4 and they work fine.

Have you seen a hybrid disk like momentus xt? it has more performance that a 10000rpm hard disk

 

Once prices come down significantly I'll be migrating back to SSDs full time. In the mean time a standard HDD will do.

 

If you change the setting once with a utility, does it stay like that or do you have to change it every time the computer boots?

 

I got the Hitachi 500GB/7200RPM HDD when it was on sale on newegg a month ago. I'm using it as a 2ndary drive. It's fast and quiet.

 

But does it spin down constantly, no matter what settings you have?

 

How would I check for that? I do run one of my larger games on it, as well as my DVD and BluRay rips. I have no glitching in any of them. Well, only when unplugged, but that's a CPU power setting, not HDD related.

 

the seagate 7200.4 momentus doesn´t spin down, at least it doesn´t do it in games and benchmarks...

 

does the wd scorpio black 320 gb spin down?

 

I have a second gen Scorpio Black 320gb. It doesn't spin down, but the rpm seems to constantly increase and decrease depending on activity. Doesn't seem to affect anything.